


Not All who Wander are Lost

by Nieve Wolfcaller (Nieve_Wolfcaller)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Community: 100_situations, Dis is a mama bear, Durin Family, Durin Feels, Dwarf Culture, Fili worries, Gen, Thorin angsts a lot, and Kili is Kili
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 100
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nieve_Wolfcaller/pseuds/Nieve%20Wolfcaller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hundred missing moments, reflections, and all the Durin family feels before, during, and after the Quest for Erebor. Thorin, Dis, Fili, and Kili will endure, as they always have. They must, for the line of Durin is strong.</p><p>Written for 100_situations on LJ using prompt table #1. As an added personal challenge, I've restricted the prompts to 200-word drabbles. (Update: every 25th entry has 300 words, because bonuses are fun.)</p><p>Finished as of 15/06/2014!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Thorin remembers.

Sometimes, on dark nights, when the cold wind blows from the east and moans through the walls of their new home, Thorin remembers the drake.

He remembers fingers of flame stretching into the midnight sky; he remembers the crashing of stone and a roar that shudders deep in his bones; he remembers the burn of hot ash in his squinted eyes and the choking weight of smoke curled in his lungs; and sometimes, when the wind howls, he imagines he can hear a thousand restless spirits scream.

On those dark nights, his footsteps lead him away. His boots ease over the creaking floorboards outside the chamber he now shares with his sister, and something in him remembers to slow his steps. His heart hammers against his ribs; his breathing is shallow, rattling, ghostly fingers of ash closing around his throat.

And on those nights he stands in the doorway, looking in on the two figures curled together on the bed he built. They are haloed in moonlight; the youngest still pokes his thumb in his mouth. In sleep, they take to clutching each other’s hands, and, suddenly, Thorin smiles.

_Not all is_ , he thinks, on those nights of hopeless memories.


	2. Back Alley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili doesn't understand what's wrong with half-dwarves.

It’s in a desolate alley that Kili first sees them, though then he doesn’t understand.

“Why’re they doing that? Why’re they hurting each other?” he asks, tugging impatiently at Dis’s arm. She hushes him, carries him from the market, but he thinks he sees the poor dwarf running away afterward, his head ducked low. Like many things, Kili doesn’t think on it much again.

Until the angry men appear at their door. Kili is frightened of them, and Fili covers his ears and holds him in Rada’s chair. Thorin is away, but Dis comes up from her forge to meet them with a burning poker. She stands stocky in the doorway, hands on hips, as unyielding as the bull.

“It is not my children you want.”

One of the men says something, and suddenly Dis is shouting, furious words of Westron that Fili cannot block out and Kili doesn’t understand. The poker jabs and scatters the men before her.

Later, Dis brushes back his raven hair and kisses his brow, and Kili wonders. “What’d they want?”

“They were looking for a child of Man, mizimuh.”

“Am I?”

Dis doesn’t, cannot answer. Kili’s eyes grow wide and hurt.

“Ama? Am I?”

 


	3. Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili and Kili are different in the woods.

Kili thinks those sunrises over the woods are the most beautiful.

He doesn’t quite know how to explain it. Perhaps it’s something in the way that everything is so vibrant, so _real_ at the dawn, the earthen scent of wet grass and the waking birds in the brush.

Perhaps there’s a primal thrill in hunting before even the sun begins his chase across the azure, with damp sweat and unkempt hair on the back of his neck and his bow in his hands.

Perhaps it’s the memory of last night: the scattered ashes of a campfire and rough blankets and the thought of how Rada would _murder_ them both if he knew of their cavorting with the youth of the Mannish village.

Or perhaps it’s Fili, halfway between not-quite-awake and hungover when he returns, his golden hair a tangled mane, wrapped in the still-warm blanket he shared with a girl whose name he doesn’t remember. He blinks at Kili and smiles.

It’s strange to think it, but somehow the brothers are closest when Fili badgers him for breakfast, and Kili teases him about his latest conquest.

In the woods, there are no kings and princes, and the sunrises are beautiful.


	4. Late

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Erebor, it's too late for them to turn back.

“I don’t like it here,” Kili whispers when no one else can hear them.

Fili doesn’t look at him, but he can hear the hitch in his brother’s breathing at his back. Musty fur clogs in his nose: the pelt they share on the floor of Thror’s Halls is damp and mouldy and, like everything else in this place, reeks of dragon-stink.

The silence spreads.

“I know.”

Fabric rustles. Kili tosses and turns, searches for nonexistent comfort in the rock. Fili hisses at him. Rumbling snores fill the cave, but he cannot be certain Thorin isn’t listening.

“I want to go home.”

“This _is_ home.” Maybe the possibility of Rada – or whatever mad spirit now wears their uncle’s semblance – overhearing puts the hardened edge in his voice. Fili sighs and burrows against his arm and hopes his brother will take the hint.

Kili presses. “We’re going to die here.”

Fili wants to scoff. To ruffle his little brother’s hair and assure him there’s nothing to worry about. Rada won’t let them die. But the Thorin in his mind has mad eyes fuelled with hatred, and he does not recognize his nephews.

Burning fills the space behind his lids.

“...I know.”

 


	5. Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin will never have a son.

Thorin Oakenshield will never have a son.

This, he has accepted. Many dwarves will never marry because they cannot; the dams of their race are too few, and marriage is reserved for the fertile. Many dwarves turn themselves over to their crafts, to wood and searing stone, and find contentment.

Few of them are kings, though.

That alone is his burden to bear. His, and his sister’s.

He cradles the gurgling child with eyes like the summer sky – like Dis’s eyes – and thinks, _I’m sorry_. The eldest son of his sister will be his heir. Durin’s Folk will expect a king of him, and he will learn that ere he learns his letters.

But it is five years later, when Dis’s second is born, that Thorin weeps. For while one nephew will be raised for greatness, this one will subsist in his shadow. While one will learn their history and legends, this one will learn to live by the sword. When he is old enough not to slur the oath, he will live by his future king, and one day he will die for him.

_In your footsteps, Frerin._

Sometimes, Thorin wishes he had a son, for his nephews’ sake.

 


	6. Hot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis hates the long waiting.

When Dis’s hammer smites the anvil, sparks fly.

The red-hot metal bar spits as she turns it atop the head, twists it, pounds it flat. Soon it will be a sword in the hands of a warrior or a Ranger, but for now it is a part of her through which her energy flows, and the metal succumbs to her iron will.

When it cools, she shoves it between the coals to reheat and pauses in her rhythm to swipe at her brow.

This sword will kill when it leaves her attentive hands. Dis is not afraid to kill, either, though she has never stood on the field of battle, and likely never will. She is the youngest daughter of Thrain, and should her brother fall in his Quest, she must remain strong for her people.

It is easier to be strong; worse is to wait, hanging on the words of ravens and the glimpses the fire-sight yields of her brother and sons. Sometimes, when the forge-fires burn hottest, she can almost feel their presence.

Beyond the mountains, Thorin is their last hope. _Her_ last hope. She must be strong.

Her hammer sings on the anvil, mirroring her steady heartbeat.

 


	7. Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dwarflings are brats.

There have never been many dwarflings in Ered Luin. Of course, having each other, Fili and Kili are never at a loss for training partners or playmates, and so the deficiency slips their notice.

That changes when the redhead starts tagging after them.

Gimli son of Gloin is fifteen years younger than Kili, still chubby-cheeked like a babe with his chin covered in peach fuzz. He tracks the brothers’ duel earnestly until Fili takes pity on him and throws him a sword.

Gimli drops it.

Kili nearly falls over howling and declares a game of King-under-the-Mountain; Gimli is the Goblin King. They chase him and poke him mercilessly with their wooden swords.

Gimli goes home in tears.

Fili regrets their behaviour somewhat, more so when Thorin finds out. As usual, Kili’s the one who started it, and Fili gets the lecture.

As usual, Kili forgets the next day.

Fili throws their shy onlooker a sword and gets an idea. “Kili’s the Goblin King!”

“What – hey!”

Kili rounds on him, distracted. Gimli thwacks him in the knee.

“Ouch!”

“King-under-the-Mountain!” Gimli blurts, as if astonished by his own nerve.

Fili grins at Kili’s dumbfounded expression. “You should’ve started running, stupid. Now c’mon!”


	8. Floor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili and Kili are adamant.

Thorin steps around the kitchen doorway and lifts an eyebrow when his boot nearly lands on top of a raven-haired dwarfling, one of the two figures huddled beneath a pile of blankets on the floor.

“Fili, Kili, what is the meaning of this?”

“Don’t wanna self-bed!” announces Kili. “It’s cold ‘n there’s _things_ under it!”

With that, Kili resumes defiantly sucking on this thumb. Thorin sighs (isn’t he supposed to have outgrown that by now?) and, as usual, looks to Fili for an explanation.

“Ama says we’re gettin’ too big to share a bed,” Fili reiterates, sitting up straight with all the maturity his extra five years afford. “But me an’ Kili don’t want to move.”

“It’s too _cold_ ,” Kili says again. “’N lonely.”

“So...” Thorin lifts an eyebrow at their chosen sleeping quarters. “This is...?”

Fili chews guiltily on his lip. “We’re protesting.”

The eyebrow moves higher. “Are you?”

“Uh-huh! Not moving!” shouts Kili, gleefully.

“Then how shall we eat breakfast tomorrow?”

Kili’s eyes widen. They haven’t thought of that.

Thorin has to chuckle. “How about I speak to Dis,” he suggests. “In the meantime, I’m sure your bed is much more comfortable for protesting.”

Fili and Kili beam.

 


	9. Cheat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin loves the secondborn.

Kili doesn’t know it, but he is incredibly lucky.

Thorin knows this. Thorin thanks Mahal for this.

It was not always so; when Dis’s second child was born, blue-faced and screaming, he had feared the boy had been cursed with misfortune. Kili was secondborn, the spare, and in Erebor this would damn him to be Fili’s sword and shield.

In Erebor, he would be dragged away at twenty – as Frerin was – and taught life or death at the point of a sword, the thrust of an axe. In Erebor, he would have knelt before his future king and sworn an oath of servitude ere he was old enough to understand the words’ depth.

But Kili was not born in Erebor.

He is a child of the wilds of Ered Luin. He is _free_. He has learned language and logic by Balin’s patient hand, and he has a loyal brother for his king who will never stand for their old way.

And so, when he sneaks into the woods with his battered bow, his uncle is willing to look the other way.

Because Kili may not be the most _dwarvish,_ but he is Thorin’s miracle.

Mahal, let him stay that way.

 


	10. Think

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili smokes when he thinks. (Or thinks when he smokes.)

Thorin had given Fili the pipe for his seventieth birthday. It’s a fine thing – hand-carved ebony and horn – and he’s almost afraid to use it. Besides, he has an equally good pipe of his own. Eventually the gift ends up in a box in the corner of his room, and Kili steals it once or twice. His younger brother doesn’t smoke; he just likes chewing on the thing, which is remotely disgusting in Fili’s mind.

The spring of the Quest, he finds it again.

Fili sits on the porch steps, a curl of sweetened smoke lingering in the light of the early evening stars. The winter snow is melting in the vales. _Prime hunting,_ he thinks. They’ll miss it.

Without a sound, Kili's there, as if summoned by his thoughts. He leans his head against Fili’s leg and prods him.

“What’re you thinking about?”

Fili exhales. His lips twitch wryly. “Worrying.”

“Don’t worry. Rada knows what he’s doing.”

_I don’t._

Kili yawns. “Pipe’s gone out.”

Fili looks, and he’s right. Self-consciously he twists the ebony pipe in his hands. “I just...need to think, sometimes.”

“I need t’look at the stars,” Kili mumbles.

Fili smiles, looking up. “Aye...that, too.”

 


	11. Disgust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili hates apples.

Apples.

_Why, Mahal, apples?_

Fili splays flat-out in the shallows. Cold, fresh air bites his cheeks. It’s dark, but by the burning behind his lids it could well be midday, and he moans pitifully.

It’s a wonder in itself that he doesn’t drown; his limbs are uncooperative jelly, his clothing is soaked through to the bone, and his once-braided hair is ragged and tangled and in his mouth, and why in Durin’s name does it taste like apples.

Hobbit-sized hands tug at his arms, but Fili won’t, _can’t_ move, and he thinks he mumbles something to that effect. The small hands huff and puff and roll him onto his back, so at least he’s not in danger of drowning himself anymore, and then the presence is gone.

Fili’s left to marvel that he’s not dead.

And then there are larger, blistered hands around his face.

“All right there, Fee? No worse off than a couple ales’ll do you, right?”

_Kili. Thank Mahal._

He reaches blindly and catches the stubble on Kili’s chin. His brother’s almost grown a beard these past months. He feels Kili grin and, suddenly, Fili awakens.

“M’fine. But don’t let me near one. Stinking. Apple. Ever again.“

 


	12. Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin shouted the wrong name.

Thorin can yet hear the deafening roar of the stone-giants when the dwarves tumble into the abandoned cave.

It doesn’t take Fili and Kili long to find each other again. Fili takes his younger brother’s head in his hands and leans their foreheads together with shaking hands. _I know,_ he whispers.

Kili is less restrained. He latches on to his brother as though the ground will tear them apart again. _I thought I’d lost you._

Thorin yearns to hold them both, but the King under the Mountain cannot. So he settles the Company, dissuades Gloin from starting a fire, and distances himself to brood.

While they prepare for bed, Thorin checks on his nephews.

He clears his throat, quietly. “Fili, Kili.”

Fili nods to him. He understands that, here, in front of the Company, he is King foremost.

“Rada,” Kili mumbles. “I was with you.”

The hurt look on his face nearly kills him.

Fili hushes him. He doesn’t mind whose name was shouted in the raging storm. They were all worried.

“I was _with you_ , Rada.”

Thorin closes his eyes. “I know.”

He cannot tell them.

Fili is the heir to his people, but Kili always has his heart.

 


	13. Borrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ori hasn't been stalking him. Not exactly.

Ori has known the prince for years, though he, in return, never knew his name. Ori is a very private dwarf, and he doesn’t like to draw attention to himself, which just means he is terribly, mortifyingly shy.

One winter, he knits him a pair of gloves. They come out too knobbly and Ori blushes and _this just won’t do_.

He practices with the needles until he’s perfected the art of glove-making.

Nori asks what his welfare project is, and Ori hits him with a lump of yarn.

When the Quest begins, they finally meet face to face. Ori reddens and hopes he doesn’t recognize a shy dwarfling who long shadowed their training-grounds.

Nori thinks it’s hilarious, and Ori hits him with his perfect gloves.

Soon the nights grow awful cold, and then one of their ponies spooks at nothing and bolts, dragging the prince into the river. Later he huddles by their bleak fire, wrapped in his brother’s furs and spitting curses.

“H-here.”

With a decisiveness that terrifies him later, Ori takes off his warm, carefully-knit gloves and proffers them.

The prince blinks up at him through dishevelled wet hair. “Th-thanks, Ori.”

Ori won’t blush. He _won’t_.

“W-welcome, Kili.”

 


	14. Chair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili and Kili stumble across the throne room.

“This is grandfather’s hall?”

Kili’s voice is hushed, but even soft whispers carry. Fili hears bats scattering overhead.

“Great-grandfather,” he corrects. “Grandfather Thrain was a prince when Erebor fell.”

“Is that where he’d sit, then?” Kili points. His sharper eyes catch a throne in the shadow of the grand one, the one Fili tries hard not to look at.

“I...think that was for the queen.”

Fili can’t remember exactly. All the tales seem so long ago; and everything in this place is far more _imposing_ than anything he had imagined as a dwarfling.

But then they stand in front of Thror’s golden throne, and he has no choice anymore. The dais would have positioned the dwarf-king high above his subjects. The inlaid designs are sharp, angular: Durin’s marks. 

Kili has the nerve to touch it first, trailing his fingers through ages of dust. Fili half-yearns to stop him. He has a terrible feeling Thorin will find out.

“Fee,” Kili whispers, “you should sit there.”

Something snaps in him. “That’s Thorin’s place. Not mine.”

_We shouldn’t be here._

He drags Kili away, but his brother looks sideways at him.

“Thorin won’t live forever, you know.”

Fili bites his tongue.

_I know._

 


	15. Alter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili learns a new way to fight.

“He is...skilled,” says Dwalin.

Thorin nods. The grizzled warrior does not give his compliments lightly, he knows. He looks at the boy.

Between them, Fili fixates his boots, clutching his practice sword behind his back. His face is flushed pink; he tries to hide it, but he is pleased with the swordmaster’s assessment.

“I was never worried about that.” Thorin draws his sword. “Fili.”

Fili gulps and accepts the blade laid across his palms. He cleaves to it reverently, and Thorin clears his throat to remind him. “Which hand feels stronger now?”

Fili reddens anew, but he dutifully takes up the sword in his right hand, then his left, moving through a few cautious practice swings. Finally he lowers the blade and looks up at his uncle, sheepishly.

“Both?”

Dwalin is smiling behind his beard now. “I see why yeh asked me now.”

“Will you train him?”

“I s’pose I could find the time. Yeh’d like that, lad?”

Fili, beyond honoured, manages a nod.

Dwalin claps him on the back. “First things first, we’ll see yeh get a real pair o’ those.”

“A-a _pair_?” Fili stutters.

Dwalin’s eyes gleam. “Well, why not put those strong hands to use, eh, lad?”

 


	16. Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin has too many regrets.

Summers in Ered Luin are long and prosperous. Durin’s folk burrow deeper into the long-abandoned mines of their forefathers and somehow draw up enough iron to keep their dozen forge-fires blazing. The proud dwarves serve as simple blacksmiths, builders, toymakers, weavers; and there in a clustered village of wood and stone they endure. They trade their fabricated goods for foodstuffs with Mannish villages and the occasional Rangers who come their way.

It’s not a wealthy existence; it’s not the splendour of Erebor, but Durin’s folk survive. Sometimes, Thorin almost believes they can flourish here.

But when the golden leaves brown and the winds shift, Thorin’s eyes, too, turn cold and look east to the Misty Mountains.

When his mood darkens, Dis is there: warm hands on his time-weathered hands, a stubborn voice in his ear. _Think of your people now, brother,_ she reminds from afar. _Think of the ones who need you here._

Thorin heeds her. He casts off the mists of the past and gazes on the village sprawling in the grey shadows of a mountain not their own.

Yet in his leaden heart, he knows even if Ered Luin is their refuge, it will never bring him peace.

 


	17. Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili is optimistic.

To Kili, the Long Lake is an ocean.

Fili declines to see it, but Kili spends hours wandering the shore while the Company recovers in Lake-town. He scuffs out flat rocks with his boots and practices tossing them so that they form connecting ripples on the glassy surface of the lake.

The clear air does his head best, and moving steals away the soreness, but sometimes it’s lonely.

That is, until a small _a-choo_ alerts him to the presence of their burglar.

He grins to see Bilbo materialize on the rocks behind him. “I’ve never seen one before,” he says. “A lake. There’s a river, back in Ered Luin, but it’s barely deep enough for swimming.”

Bilbo sniffs. “I do’d buch like the sight today.”

“Why not?”

“I was quite certaid we’d all drowd out there,” Bilbo says with a shudder that’s not from cold.

Kili shrugs and spots a smooth rock by his heel. He picks it up, turns it over. “I wasn’t worried.”

“Ah?”

“After all, you saved Rada’s life before. I knew you’d get us through all right.”

The rock skips across the water once, twice, _plop._ Kili smiles back at Bilbo.

“And we _are_ all right.”

 


	18. True

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili was born for this.

The bow is too big for him, Thorin sees.

Kili clutches it awkwardly under one arm, beaming, as the old Ranger chuckles. “Right, go fetch your arrows,” he says with a smile that wrinkles his eyes.

Kili obeys, as fast as the dwarfling’s short legs can run. When he reaches the tree they’ve been using for target practice he stops short, stands on tiptoe, carefully tugs the stuck arrows straight back like the Ranger taught him.

Then he’s back and _Again, sir?_ the eager prince asks.

“And again.”

Kili deposits the arrows but one, nocks it, and squares his stance. It takes a moment for his skinny arm to draw the bowstring taut, and then he quivers as he takes aim, his left eye shut, his right squinting down the shaft.

The Ranger steps around him and makes a slight adjustment to the height of his elbow, but Thorin can tell Kili has already memorized the stance.

“Aim true,” says the Ranger.

The bowstring twangs, the arrow snaps forward and meets the centre of the tree with a dull thud. Kili’s aim is true, Thorin sees.

His face shines. “Didja see that, Rada? Didja _see_?”

And Thorin smiles. “I saw.”


	19. Crazy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin's gone mad.

“He’s gone mad,” Kili whispers as Thorin paces the length of Thror’s Halls. His shoulders hunched, his eyes brooding, it’s not their uncle Fili sees, but a caged bear.

“It’s the dragon-sickness.”

“He’s gone _mad_.” Kili lowers his head onto his knees, miserably fixating the floor.

“He’ll be better,” Fili promises, vaguely. “Once we find the Arkenstone.”

“Fee...” Kili hesitates on the words. “If I start t’go that way – if I go mad – you’ll have to...”

But he stops himself. They’ve lost what made their uncle whole. How can they hope to stop the madness?

Fili grips his shoulder. “You _won’t_ , Kili.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re _Kili_. You don’t care about gold or treasure or...or any of it. You love the forest and climbing trees and your bow. You don’t need anything more.”

Kili nods timidly, like he wants to believe. A sudden loud crash makes Fili wince: Thorin shouts and rages at their burglar. Uncle clanks in his stolen armour, his shadow looming and bristling like an angry dragon.

“Fee?” Kili prods at long last. “What about you?”

Fili smiles wanly and squeezes his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Why not?”

“Because. ‘Cause I’ve got you, and that’s enough.”

 


	20. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis loves her children.

Dis loves her children, as difficult as that might be sometimes.

She loves her golden-maned Fili, whose hair and nose remind her so much of Avnor, but whose serious tone reminds her of Thorin when he recounts his latest lessons with Mister Balin, or that Mister Dwalin wants him using two swords. She loves his focus as he watches her swing hammer at anvil, and she is more than proud when he swears someday to be a smith like Ama and wear the silver beads of her guild. She loves that, for all his talent and responsibility, it’s Avnor’s tenderness she sees in his eyes, even if he knew his father for less than five years.

It’s the tenderness, she thinks, that will make him a great king someday.

And she loves Kili, whose looks are solely Durin. Kili, who isn’t old enough for lessons yet but brings her feathers and mud-cakes and smiles hopefully for her approval. Kili, who seems to have inherited Frerin’s mind for mischief and usually ends up tracking mud through the front hall or breaking things.

Dis loves her children, and as she kisses them for bed they giggle at the scratchiness of her beard.


	21. New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin gives Kili a present.

“Mine?” Kili clarifies, uncertainly.

“It’s yours,” Thorin confirms with an almost amused smile. “So long as you’re interested in practicing.”

He can still hope that it is just a stage; but as Kili traces his fingers over the bow Thorin can read an almost longing in his expression. It is a beautiful bow: ornate horn shapes the recurve, and runes frame the grip. In a word, it is _dwavish_ , Thorin thinks.

“Well? Good enough for a prince?”

Kili blinks back up at him. “But – Rada – what about –?”

Thorin presses his hand to his shoulder. “Try it out first.”

Kili nods and scrambles for his arrows, and Thorin can hear him shouting for Fili as he thunders downstairs. He smirks and follows more slowly.

When he reaches the yard, Kili has already picked a target among the orchard trees, and Fili watches as he takes aim. The bow draws smoothly for him; he does not have to fight a too-heavy string, and his shot follows steady and true.

The commotion has brought Dis from her forge. She stands at Thorin’s shoulder as Kili strikes the centre of another tree.

“Frerin’s bow?”

Thorin watches his nephew’s face gleam. “It was time.”

 


	22. Beggar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis is proud.

Dis is a princess of Durin, and she will never beg.

This is a philosophy her brother taught her. Thorin, not Frerin – Frerin was never without a smile or a laugh, even in their exile. Thorin lost his smile the day Erebor fell.

Dis remembers plumes of flame rising from their mountain, but she cannot recall her brother’s smile.

Dis is no longer a princess of Erebor, but she is a princess all the same. She weaves the princess’s braids into her hair each morning before she dons her rough blacksmith’s cottons and descends to her forge.

She works by the heat of the fire and the clanking of metal, and sometimes, if she strikes the anvil hard enough, she imagines it’s a dragon’s skull she’s pummelling.

When Men pass over her handiwork, she wants to cry and hit something.

It could be better, she knows. It _should_ be better, as befits a princess, but she never learned from a master smith. It was Thorin who taught her, on the road, in borrowed weak-fire forges of Men.

But princesses never beg. So she stands with feet planted, head high, and awaits her next customers with a face of hardened stone.


	23. False

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili wonders about their father.

“Ama, am I a bastard?”

Dis accidentally yanks the comb loose in Kili’s hair. He bites his lip but doesn’t cry. “Mahal’s name, of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I don’t got an adad.” Kili considers. “And Fili don’t, either.”

“That’s not true. You both had an adad.” Dis’s voice quiets as she returns to his dishevelled locks.

“Where’d he go then?”

“He’s dead, Kili.”

“How?”

Dis chooses her next words carefully. “It was...a warg raid on the village. You weren’t born then. They came for our herds, but the herds were too thin. Your adad...helped Thorin with the defence. They saved our village, but his wounds...it was too late.”

“Why’d we never hear ‘bout him? We hear ‘bout grandfather and great-grandfather all the time.”

“Because,” Dis sighs, “Avnor was a Man.”

“Then we _are_ bastards,” says Kili. “Right?”

“You are princes of Durin’s folk, and don’t let any dwarf tell you otherwise.” Dis kisses his brow. “Know this: your adad might not have been a king, or a hero of legend, but he was a great man. When you’re older, you’ll understand.”

Kili wrinkles his nose. “’N we’ll hear about him?”

“You will. I promise,” Dis smiles.

 

 


	24. Happy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili refuses an order.

The morning after his eightieth naming-day, Thorin tells Fili of his plans to retake Erebor. His nephew absorbs the words with his hands over his face.

At last, Fili stirs.

“What if I say no?”

It is not the response he expects. “No...? There is no _no_.”

“Erebor was your home. I can respect that, and your quest, Rada.” Fili hesitates. “But...it’s not ours...Kili and I, _this_ is our home, we’re _happy_ here –”

The words are knives in his chest. His nephews were raised in Ered Luin; they have never seen the great mines, nor the arcing halls of their forefathers. Their wonders are the open sky and the forest depths. Mahal, Kili even climbs trees like an elf.

Thorin forces his voice to remain even. “Fili. You are my heir; the heir to Erebor. _That_ is your home. _That_ is where you will be happy.”

“What have I been, if not happy?” Fili asks.

“Alive. You have survived.” Thorin brushes the boy’s warm cheeks. “And I fear it has cost too much.”

Fili pulls away from the touch, wounded. “Let me go, Rada.”

Thorin knows he has lost him. He sinks back, eyes closed. “Yes...send in your brother.”

 


	25. Cancer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 300 Edition: Thorin is ill.

Dwarves are not susceptible to the ills of Men. Their bodies are strong; their hearts, stout.

What they fear, then, is the illness of mind.

 _Dragon-sickness,_ they name it. _Gold-lust,_ think the Men who judge simple avarice to be the dwarves’ crippling vice. But they can see no deeper into their ancestral curse. They cannot understand the unseen force that would rend the stoutest of dwarf warriors’ hearts.

It consumed Thror, the last mighty King under the Mountain; it drove Thrain mad in his long exile; and now Thorin Oakenshield feels the primal hunger stir within his chest.

He tries to fight it.

But though an oak-branch sits stolid on his arm, his mind is weak. _Dark_. And the sickness thrives in darkness; it lurks within his blackest memories, taunting him with the glimmer of the Arkenstone.

He cannot sleep. He paces like the caged beast within, but the memories follow him.

The head of mighty king Thror lies before him, evil orc-runes driven into his scalp. Frerin dies in his arms, his armour pierced with arrows. He watches his mother wither away in exile, and Thrain’s mind soon follows her into grief. He speaks of lunacy and a glowing stone, and then he speaks no more. The mad king vanishes in the night with a party bound for Erebor, never to be seen again.

Thorin is the last.

The last...

Sometimes, in the late night, in the early hours of morning, he wonders if there’s not something he’s missing. Sometimes, the shroud of madness lightens and he can almost see them.

_Rada. Rada, can you hear me?_

Darkness falls again too soon. His face crumples, and he glares at the raven-haired boy who dared lay a hand on his arm.

No... Thorin _knows_.

He is the last Durin now.

 


	26. Pickpocket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nori joins Thorin's Company.

Nori is a thief. He’s not ashamed to admit it.

(Except, of course, on those occasions when Dori gives him _that look,_ and no amount of wheedling that Dori didn’t mind when he brought home those exotic teas will get the brothers out of an argument.)

But Nori can’t help it.

Sometimes his fingers just...slip.

It’s a gaping pocket one day; a loose wrist-watch, the next. Nori is quite proud of his little business, and if he’s careful that Dori only ever sees the lovely new quill and hair-beads he bought for Ori, well, all the smoother.

Inevitably, though, he gets caught.

Inevitably, it’s in a Mannish market, with a terrified Ori looking on as the Men pin him down and threaten to chop off his wandering hands.

It’s not the first threat, and it’s not the worst. (If only he could reach his knives...) He tells Ori not to look and struggles and, whoops, elbow goes in eye.

“Let the dwarf go.”

Nori has never been happier, or more surprised, to see Thorin Oakenshield send off his pursuers.

“ _You_.”

(Nori isn’t so happy now.)

Thorin waits until the Men are gone to reprimand.

“I have a job for you.”

 


	27. Reverse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili and Kili get mixed up.

When dwarves are introduced to Fili and Kili, they are usually a bit bemused.

_Which one’s the heir?_

_The blond,_ Thorin says, a touch irritated.

Fili, unfortunately, can see the source of their confusion. Kili _looks_ the part of a Durin much better than him. He has the family’s raven hair, dark eyes, sharp, chiselled features. If he grows in a proper beard, his resemblance to Thorin will be frightening. And Kili is tall for a dwarf, so if he doesn’t move about too much – since he’s still at that coltish stage where he’s liable to trip over his own lankiness – he can do a passable impression of imposing.

Fili, on the other hand, is shorter, blonder, and is oft mistaken for a Firebeard. He knows he takes after his adad, but only he and Dis seem to remember him. And try as he might, he can’t seem to emulate Thorin’s dead-serious expression. He thinks it’s something about the broodiness.

Kili makes it easier on them. He flaunts his bow and lets his hair grow wild and tangled because he hates the braids.

 _People are stupid,_ Kili says, later. _They can’t see you try better’n me. Always have._

Fili wonders.

 


	28. Deliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili runs deliveries.

Sometimes, when Dis and Fili are swamped with business in the forge, Kili runs deliveries.

It’s not a hard job, and he doesn’t mind it, really, venturing to the nearest Mannish villages with his mother’s orders. Sometimes it’s only messages he delivers: an update on how long an axe or armour job will take. He rattles off Dis’s instructions by rote and remembers his respectful bows and _at-your-service_ s.

It’s the questions Kili doesn’t like.

 _Are you the apprentice?_ they ask, frowning.

Even Men have an inkling of the significance dwarf-beads, even if they ignore the intricacies of their guilds; and when they see none of the silver smith’s beads in Kili’s wild hair, they begin to doubt.

Kili wants to snap that their ignorant hands aren’t worth the quality of Dis and Fili’s dwarvish craftsmanship.

But Dis doesn’t like him losing customers, so he keeps his smile. _Only the messenger, sir._

Sometimes, Kili hates that the world thinks he’s artless. A dwarf without a craft.

The truth is, there are no beads for what he’s mastered.

When he takes the long road home through the woods, his bow in hand and his mind on the hunt, Kili doesn’t really care.

 


	29. Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili's first impression of Erebor.

Something about their arrival in Erebor seems anticlimactic, or maybe Fili is just too tired, too shaken and starved of proper food and sunlight to appreciate the crumbled halls filled with cobwebs and dried dragon dung.

When they reach Thror’s Halls, the atmosphere lightens and the Company can see stout skeletons scattered among upturned tables and pits of ash. Those who remember bow their heads, and Balin weeps.

Kili recognizes the light for what it is, though, and Fili follows him. The corridor bends, and a flare of white light hits his eyes. Fili stops, blinded, until a hand closes over his own.

Kili leads him to the Front Gate.

Fili could cry when the wind breathes on his face. The autumn sun is warm. His knees shake, but Kili holds him up.

“Look, brother,” he says in Fili’s ear.

Fili opens his eyes. He shields them with his hand and, slowly, the valley unfolds before him. At their feet, the ground lies cracked and barren, but beyond sprawl golden fields and forests, and a defiant steam-misted brook trickles. In the distance the skeleton of Dale glows in the sunset.

Fili’s knees buckle.

For the first time, he thinks, _Home_.

 


	30. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili is going to fall.

“Kili, you’re gonna fall!”

“Amn’t!” Kili calls over his shoulder, already scanning the trunk above for his next handhold. He fits his fingers in a knot, grins when it holds, and hoists himself up.

Fili huffs. He looks across the field, hopefully, but Rada is back in town and Kili insisted _I’ve got something to show you_ in the orchard.

Then the arrow landed in the tree, and Kili insisted on climbing after it.

“Rada’ll blame me, you know,” Fili assures his brother’s ascending back. “You’ll be crying on the ground and he’ll say, _Fili you were s’posed to watch him_ , and Kili _don’t you dare_ –“

Kili takes both hands off the branch to pluck the arrow loose. He sways with the breeze, grinning.

“M’too old to cry, Fee.”

“Maybe _you_ are,” Fili mutters.

Finally, Kili comes down. Fili hates watching this: Kili’s unruly hair is in his eyes and he can’t _possibly_ see where he’s putting his feet. Fili fixates the horizon instead.

“Fine. Don’t cry. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you get hurt.”

Kili skids down the last few feet, and the arrow lands in Fili’s hands.

“See, Fee? I didn’t fall,” Kili smiles.

 

 


	31. Knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili likes shiny knives.

Bilbo coughs. “So – how many of those do you have, exactly?”

Fili follows the hobbit’s gaze to his vambrace, where the hilt of a hunting knife is visible. He grins, tugging it loose. “These?”

“Yes. I–I’ve seen them close enough already, thanks.” Bilbo throws up his hands in a self-defensive gesture, as if he expects Fili to unload his arsenal on him again.

By now, Kili has pricked his ears and wandered over to investigate.

Fili shrugs lightly, sheathing the dagger. “Well, to be perfectly honest...I’m not sure.”

Bilbo coughs again, and Fili has to be concerned for the hobbit’s health. “You–you don’t mean to say you’ve _lost_ some?”

Fili nods, solemnly. “Aye, it happens. Deep pockets. Don’t realize they’re there until I sleep on ‘em.”

“It’s not pretty,” Kili supplies.

“And then there’s _this_ oaf,” Fili nudges his brother’s ribs, “who has a habit of filching ‘em. And you’ve no idea his talent for losing things.”

Bilbo now looks a little ill. “I – I think I hear Gandalf calling,” he says meekly, and totters off in no small haste.

Kili stifles a laugh as a cough.

“Might want Oin to check that,” Fili remarks, ruffling his hair.

 


	32. Torn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili can almost reach him.

“ _Kili_! Grab my hand!”

Fili stretches out his hand and almost feathers his brother’s but for the mountain roiling beneath them. Kili stumbles, takes a step back, and by then it’s too late to move back toward Fili.

The fissure in the rock yawns wider between them. Stone hails from above and crumples away below.

Fili still has his empty hand stretched over the edge. On his face is writ such sharp terror that for an instant Kili can’t move. _Jump,_ say his brother’s moving lips. The thunderstorm steals away his voice.

Kili begins to shake his head, freezing rain stinging his cheeks. _I can’t._ The dark gap is already too wide. The truth sinks in his stomach. To dare it is death.

_I can’t._

Kili takes a step back instead and feels it wrench in his chest when Fili pulls back his hand. The waking stone-giant rises up from his rocky tomb, a fury-raw bellow quailing the cliffs. Fili stumbles, catches himself between the crags, and looks back at Kili as the giant carries him into the sky.

Kili watches, frozen, until the pinprick dwarves on the stone-giant’s leg swing out of sight.

And then he is truly afraid.

 

 


	33. Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Quest is at risk.

Kili does not fully grasp the gravity of their situation until the Eagles are depositing them atop the aerie.

And then his legs nearly give out.

“Rada! _Thorin!_ ” he shouts, stumbling as his feet hit solid rock. He doesn’t stop to check his balance. He runs for his uncle, who lies bloody and unresponsive and...and...

Kili can’t see his chest moving.

Thorin is dead. Kili is certain of it, and he chokes on an awful half-sob as Fili holds him back. Gandalf reaches their uncle’s supine form in swift strides and kneels over him.

“Fili –” Kili tries, but Fili silences him.

So long as they don’t speak, so long as Gandalf whispers those strange words over their uncle’s brow, they can hold on.

Kili doesn’t know what magic makes Thorin open his eyes, or hug the hobbit, but he could fall to his knees and thank Mahal for the Grey Wizard.

When they espy Erebor on the horizon, Kili has a sudden urge to laugh. They’ve _made it_.

But Fili looks out over the cliff behind them.

“Fee, Erebor’s that way.”

“I know. But...” Fili squeezes his arm, and Kili feels him shake. “I can’t ever forget this, either.”

 

 


	34. Neutral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili wishes he could arbitrate.

A good king is a perfect mediator, Fili knows. A good king listens, and judges, and doles rightful consequence in the end.

Only, he can’t remain neutral when Ama and Rada are arguing about _him_.

Fili crouches atop the stairs and listens to the terse voices rising from the kitchen. Thorin paces in frustration, and his footfalls echo as if he is walking up behind his nephew.

“They can’t survive this way, Dis. They will never learn our ways here. Have you heard their Khuzdul? Fili’s is passable, but Kili...Mahal, he can’t speak our tongue.”

“They are too young, Thorin.” Fili imagines Dis standing her ground. “You will not send them there alone.”

“Dain will teach them. It is not Erebor, but at least they will learn.. _._ ”

Fili curls his fists. He knows this is his fault. He _should_ try harder; but Balin’s books are old and dusty, and the words are so hard to parse. Kili doesn’t even try; reading gives him a headache.

A door slams. “ _Stop fighting_!”

Kili. Brave Kili, who stutters in Khuzdul, mediates with his tears. Ama hugs him and Rada shuffles off to brood, and Fili knows.

They will not be sent away today.

 


	35. Mate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis doesn't believe in soul mates.

Dis doesn’t believe in soul mates.

It’s simply impractical, and she doesn’t understand why so many dwarves are willing to put such foolishness in their children’s heads. Mahal could scribe the secret name of her lover on her heart if it pleased Him; for all Dis knows, the poor soul perished That Day in Erebor.

Dwarvish marriage is a necessity, not a celebration. It is a steel-forged institution to ensure there will be enough bairns to be future kings and warriors and blacksmiths, and enough girls for _them_ to have bairns. Love figures nowhere in that equation, Dis thinks.

She, too, will marry someday, if only because Thorin will need heirs.

Perhaps it’s the exile that makes her cynical. Perhaps she has too long watched the unhappiness that is Thrain and Lady Bryndis's marriage crumble.

Lagertha and Helgi think she is too harsh. _You haven’t found the right dwarf yet,_ surmises Lagertha, who as a Firebeard shieldmaiden should be above this nonsense. Dis scoffs.

But perhaps Lagertha is right.

Perhaps she will love someday.

Perhaps her stone heart will melt.

Dis watches the blond-haired Ranger approach her forge with an armful of firewood, smiling despite the cold, and thinks, _Perhaps..._


	36. Fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili's brother dreams he can fly.

Kili was always a little...strange, for a dwarf.

From the time he could chase after Fili, he was off beneath the green trees beyond their home, laughing and falling in the dirt and coming home with fistfuls of golden dandelions for Ama.

Kili loves the trees.

When he and Fili are a little older, they claim a great wizened oak in the orchard as their Lookout-Tree. Kili climbs to its top first. Fili copies him once, just to save face, but doesn’t attempt it again.

When he turns twenty, Thorin shows him around the forge, but Kili later admits he hates every minute spent in the enclosed space.

At thirty, he doesn’t take up a craft, but tells Fili he’s been asking the Rangers for lessons with the bow. He wants to be an archer. He’s terrified of what Thorin will think.

Other dwarves tunnel into the earth for their gems. Fili’s brother climbs trees to get a better look at the stars.

Maybe it’s strange, even _elvish_ , but Kili never hears it. Fili makes sure of it.

“Sometimes,” Kili admits when he and Fili have long outgrown their Lookout-Tree but sit up there anyway, “I dream I can fly.”

 


	37. Loud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili cries in the night.

The boy’s cries draw him out of his study late one night. Upstairs, Thorin finds Dis is already up feeding him.

She offers a tired smile, seeing him framed in the doorway with his arms crossed.

“Strong lungs. He’ll be a warrior yet.”

As she speaks she runs her fingers in circles down his back. Thorin frowns; the raven-haired child looks smaller every time he sees him. _Kili,_ Dis called him.

Thorin moves quietly into the room and stands at his sister’s back. Dis’s hair lies long and unkempt; she has not taken out her ragged marriage braid since...since that night.

Absently Thorin threads his hands through her hair, weaving the fallen strands together. Avnor is gone. The child is too early. Dis is broken for it.

“Spare me that look, Thorin Oakenshield.”

“What look?”

Dis twists around, a familiar fire in her eyes. “ _That_ look. A princess of Durin does not deserve your pity.”

Kili cries anew.

“Shh, mizimuh,” Dis whispers, stroking his damp hair. And then she hums for him, a song of misty mountains and sadness.

When she is done, Thorin touches her shoulder.

“You will survive.” It is an order.

“ _We_ will survive.” Dis’s eyes smoulder.

 


	38. Touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili can't breathe.

In the darkness, it’s impossible to know if they’re alive or dead.

Darkness _swallows_ the tunnel. Its shroud lies thicker and deeper than night, and even the air is heavy and sluggish, stale and rank with dragon-stink.

Dwarves were born to live with the weight of stone over their heads, but none of them are comfortable here, so near to the dragon’s lair. Blind and restless, they huddle and try to sleep while the wyrm circles the skies overhead.

Fili can’t breathe.

His coughing ruptures the stillness. It doesn’t help. This air clogs in his lungs like ash and he wonders, not for the first time, how long until the mountain stifles them.

Thinking on it doesn’t help his quickening breaths. Fili feels light-headed.

Maybe he is stifling.

“Brother?”

Kili touches his arm in concern.

Fili makes a choked sound in response. It’s too dark to see him. Too dark to tell how close the walls have gotten.

He swears they’ve gotten closer.

Warm hands on his face distract him. Pull him back to the place where he’s still alive, if only for now. In the darkness, Kili presses their foreheads together. Holds him.

“Brother, I’m here,” Kili whispers. “Always.”

 


	39. Seek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili seeks Thorin's approval.

This time, Fili is certain, as he knocks the practice sword out of Kili’s hand.

His brother groans in defeat and Fili looks, quickly, up at Thorin.

“Good,” says Rada shortly. “And again.”

_Nothing._

Fili’s face falls, and Kili sticks his tongue out at him as he crawls after his sword.

He doesn’t understand. He follows through the same stances he uses against Mister Dwalin, modifying, of course, for Kili’s shorter height. He’s _positive_ he’s done everything right.

There’s nothing more frustrating.

Fili _knows_ he is a prodigy. Mister Balin says so, beaming, when he wraps his head around a piece of ancient Khuzdul wisdom and explains it in his own logic. Dis approves of his able work in the forge. Even Mister Dwalin can find no complaint with his dual-wielding technique. Anything he puts his mind to, Fili is used to accomplishing, _perfectly_.

Only, Thorin never smiles for his nephew.

Fili’s never fought harder to achieve anything.

They duel again, at Thorin’s nod. Predictably, Kili’s sword hits the dirt; but when Thorin turns away, Fili throws his down, too.

“Are you not _pleased_ , Rada?”

Thorin turns back, perplexed. _Surely_ he sees.

“Why?”

_...No._

Fili crumples, hands over his face.

 


	40. Argue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis doesn't want him to go.

“I will not give this quest my blessing.” Dis turns away sharply and marches to the window.

“Sister...” Thorin tries, quietly.

“No, Thorin, you do not understand. This is the same madness Ada spoke before he vanished.”

“I am not Thrain,” Thorin reminds her, an edge to his voice.

No, he is not Thrain. He is not the mad king, callous to his own children. He is her brother.

He is all she has left.

Dis leans her hands on the sill. “I should go with you,” she whispers.

“No.” Thorin steps toward her, takes her hands, and would lean their foreheads together, but Dis turns her face away. “There must always be a Durin here, sister. You must guide our people. You must remain strong...”

The words trail away. He will not voice it. He will not suggest that he may not return; that the quest may fail, and Dis may be the last of the line of Durin.

She says nothing. She has argued, she has laid out her qualms, but her fiery will burns to ashes. Thorin holds her, hands rough but steady.

Dis touches his weather-worn cheeks. “If you call, I will answer. Know that, brother.”

 


	41. Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili can't stand the forge.

Fili has worked in a forge for over twenty years, but it’s not his place.

Still, he’s not Kili; the sparks and the cramped quarters and the ringing of metal don’t bother him.

At least, not at first.

But Fili won’t, can’t disappoint Dis, so he works hard and earns his blacksmith’s beads until he’s a master, like his mother and uncle. Then Dis has her bragging-rights with the guild, and Thorin can sleep at night knowing his nephew isn’t a complete failure.

And in the morning, when Kili clips the silver beads in his hair, Fili confesses he can’t do this.

Because only Kili knows that some nights Fili comes home coughing too hard to sleep. Only Kili knows that when he’s alone and the forge-fires burn brightest, he starts to sweat and then he’s dizzy and that’s when the walls _move._

It wasn’t always like this.

But sometime, growing up, Fili became aware of his harrowing claustrophobia.

Kili tries to talk him out of it sometimes. He doesn’t have to do this to himself.

But Fili will anyway. He’s too much of a damned perfectionist not to.

The silver beads brush cold against his cheeks when he leaves.


	42. Sink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili drowns.

One moment Kili is on the riverbank, wrestling with the bolting pony. The next, the lead rope twists out of his hands like a wet snake and the soil crumples away beneath him.

Jaws of ice close around his chest. His first instinct is to gasp; murky water surges into his mouth. Kili gags and thrashes, but his churning feet don’t find the bottom.

The river is swollen and fast; it drags at his heavy cloak and carries him farther away from the bank. Kili imagines the Company running down to rescue him, but he doesn’t think any of them know how to swim.

_He_ knows how to swim – or at least how to splash and float in the shallow stream in Ered Luin. He can’t fight this river.

It occurs to Kili that he’s dying.

The thought fills him with cold. Tendrils seize him, pull him downward until some still-rational part of him screams _NO_ and he kicks out, madly, at nothing.

And then there are arms around his chest.

Kili’s head breaks the surface and he coughs and sputters and tastes salty water on his cheeks.

“All righ’, lad?” growls Dwalin.

Kili bobs his head and gasps, silently.


	43. Nut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili and Kili plant acorns.

“Fee, look! Look what I found!”

Kili runs up to him on the porch and opens his sticky fists. He presents his prize, proudly.

“Those’re acorns,” says Fili, picking one up and examining the dark brown shell.

“We can eat them?”

“Well, you could,” says Fili, doubtfully. “They’re baby oak trees.”

Kili thinks twice about eating them. “Like the Lookout-Tree? But they’re so _small_.”

“ _You’re_ small.” Fili wrinkles his nose. “Unlike you, though, they’ll grow big enough if you plant ‘em.”

“We can plant them?” Kili tugs his hand eagerly.

Fili rolls his eyes. “Sure you can. I’ll go find Ama’s shovel.”

They work all afternoon, digging a dozen holes around their Lookout-Tree in the yard. The shovel is too heavy for Kili to manoeuvre, but he likes sticking the seeds in the ground and patting the dirt down flat on top. He makes a dwarfling’s nonsense song of it: _Little oak grow big n’strong, n’branches tall to climb along,_ he sings softly, like a lullaby.

Six months later, the acorns are all but forgotten when Fili notices the twin sprouts in the shadow of the Lookout-Tree.

“They’re still small,” Kili pouts.

“You’re still small. Stupid.” Fili ruffles his hair.


	44. Stuck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bifur likes his bird.

“Why’s there an axe in your head?” Kili asks, pointing.

Bifur looks confused, and a little alarmed, by the dwarfling’s question. “ _Zatagrifizd sudulthurkh, zundush wazundshai. Nargubraz. Nargubraz!_ ” he mutters.

“It’s well and stuck in there, lad,” says Bofur, coming across the workshop toward them. Bifur hand-signals frantically; Bofur smiles and signs back, _OK_ , before crouching next to Kili.

“How’d he get an axe in his head?” the dwarfling asks.

“Mining accident.” Bofur manages to keep his smile. “But you know, lad, he finds you just as confusing as you do.”

“Should I speak Khuzdul, too?” Kili whispers.

“Might as well try,” smiles Bofur, knowing that Bifur doesn’t understand his own mutterings half the time.

Tentatively, Kili approaches Bifur’s worktable and asks, in broken Khuzdul, _What’re you working on?_

“Narzdush.”

Bifur bends his head over the wooden mechanisms. Shuts out the world. His fingers move quickly, surely, repairing what only he understands to be broken. Kili brightens suddenly.

“It’s a bird!”

“Aye, he likes the birds.”

“Does it fly?”

Bofur taps his cousin’s desk and signs, _Want to show him?_ Bifur mutters, turns a knob, and the little mechanized bird flutters its wings.

Kili’s face shines in wonder, and Bifur smiles.


	45. Animal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frerin wants to keep it.

“Frerin, _no_ ,” says Thorin when he sees exactly what his younger brother has dragged back to camp.

Mud and leaves cake Frerin’s wild hair. He looks up at his brother wide-eyed, like the scruffy dog sitting at his heels. Thorin doesn’t know where he picked up the stray. He doesn’t want to know.

“Thorin –”

“No.”

“– His name is Snowfoot.”

Thorin nearly snorts aloud. The dirt-smeared stray is anything but _snowy_ , and probably’s infested.

“No,” he repeats, with Ada’s firmness. “We can’t take...it with us. Ada will have it put down. You know this.”

Frerin plops to the ground, arms crossed. He’s protesting again. It’s what he does when he won’t, can’t walk anymore, when he’s tired and hungry and wants to go home.

Frerin is a child, Thorin thinks.

They don’t have a home.

Later, the caravans are packed to move on, but Frerin is missing. Thorin, rolling his eyes, suspects Frerin is still _protesting_ and goes looking.

They’re in the back of the grain cart.

Thorin finds them there, huddled together among the sacks. They’ve washed Snowfoot; Dis snuggles up to him with her fists clutched in his fur and a smile on her face.

Frerin winks.


	46. Pray

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis prays.

Each night, Dis lights the last candle in the name of Mahal, the Maker, and prays.

The years make her prayer long, and it carries her up and down the rows of the Halls of Waiting. She glimpses faces, weathered by time and failing memory, and whispers their names to rekindle the candles in her heart.

King Thror and Lady Freya. The last to hold to the pride of Erebor. Dis prays for their strength of will to guide her.

King Thrain, the mad king, her ada, who vanished in the mists of the night. _May his mind find peace,_ she thinks. And Lady Bryndis, her beloved ama, _may her heart be at rest._

She prays for Frerin, and all the dwarves who were lost but never buried.

She prays that Mahal welcomes her Avnor, and that he knows how _proud_ she is of his sons.

And, when the candle quivers and burns low, she prays for her brother, for her sons at the edge of the world, and prays she will never whisper their names.

Each night, Dis blows out the last candle and rises stiff-kneed, and thinks she’s too old to carry the burdens of all her folk.


	47. Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili has never missed.

The arrow slips through his fingers, and Kili somehow knows the shot is wide.

The beast has scented him; it lunges as the feathers leave his fingertips, and Kili’s arrow finds not the deadly spot between its eyes, but the thick sinews of its shoulder. The warg keens, snarls, and tumbles from atop the rock.

Kili has never missed.

At least, not until this instant; not until the entire Company looks on in terror, huddled behind the crags, and a wounded warg is falling on top of them.

The second arrow finds his bow, nocked. The orc rider hasn’t the chance to untangle himself from his thrashing mount before Kili shoots him. At close range, half draw, the shot is clumsy and spurs the orc into a rage. A roar tears from his throat as the rider leaps up, seizes a jagged blade, lunges for the prince.

A sudden flurry of swinging axes and dwarvish curses befalls him. When Kili blinks, steps back, he sees Dwalin and Bifur standing over the twitching bodies.

Kili busies himself nocking another arrow so that he doesn’t have to look at the Company. To see the look in Rada’s eyes.

He had never missed.


	48. Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stars are bright.

Kili’s eyes are wide open.

Below their ridge, the White Downs leading to Hobbiton are cloaked in darkness. Their ponies disappeared hours ago; sometimes Kili sees a shift of shadow as they graze. If he turns his head, he can see the flickering embers of his brother’s fire.

But that’s not what keeps him awake.

“The stars’re bright out here,” he whispers.

“...Kee, go to sleep.”

Kili _can’t_ sleep. He shuffles his hands behind his head. “This’s the farthest I’ve been. Farthest from home, until now.”

Sometimes, he tries to imagine how many footsteps back to the rickety porch in Ered Luin. Back to Ama, who cries as she waves, even if she promised she wouldn’t.

He loses count somewhere around two hundred.

There’s a rustle and a change in the shadows and, suddenly, Fili’s hand lands in his hair. His brother sits opposite his bedroll.

“We’re going home now,” Fili whispers. “Now, c’mon, Kili. There’s a long ride ahead of us, and if you’re yawning when Rada sees you...”

Kili sits up. “I’m not tired. I’ll take watch –”

“No, Kee.”

Kili gauges his brother’s shadowed expression. “You can’t sleep, either.”

Fili smiles, sadly.

“The stars’re bright, aren’t they?”


	49. Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is not sick.

Fili’s _not_ sick.

It’s illogical. Dwarves don’t get sick – unless they’re old, or they’ve got the dragon-sickness.

Fili is twenty-five and perfectly sane, so he is positively _not sick._

Fili reflects on this, defiantly, as he huddles beneath his blankets and sniffles miserably. He’s allergic to something, or, or, overworked himself training. That’s all.

The door opens. Kili peeks through the crack.

“Ama says you have a _cold._ ”

“G’away,” Fili mumbles, dragging the covers over his head. Sick or not, Kili has a tendency to be loud, and Fili’s not sure he can deal with loud right now.

But Kili ignores him and tiptoes over to his bedside. He’s so quiet that Fili doesn’t notice until small hands are dragging the blankets out of his fists.

“Fee?”

“I said g’away.” Fili cracks his eyes open in a glare, and is startled by the wide-eyed concern on Kili’s face. “Whad?”

“You’s gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, I’b gonna be okay.” Fili’s not sure. Sitting up makes his head hurt.

But Kili brightens, and tackles him in a hug that drags them both to the bed. Fili coughs and groans.

“Kili...”

“Your nose is all red n’yucky.”

Fili rolls his eyes. “Thags, Kili.”


	50. Affair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 300 edition: Fili is spurned.

Afterward, Breya runs her hands through his loosening braids with a sleepy smile.

_You’re my lion, you know?_ she whispers. _My heart._

Fili knows.

But when he wakes later, it is not yet morning and she is weeping. Alarmed, he rolls over and touches her bared shoulder. “Breya? What’s wrong?”

She trembles to the touch. “Y-you still don’t know who I am. Do you?”

“Breya –” he tries.

But she pulls away from him, tears tracking down her barely bearded face. “Breya,” she says, with a ghost of a first introduction’s formality, “daughter of Dain son of Nain. I’m sorry. I–I should have told you.”

_Dain_. Thorin’s cousin, who extended a personal invitation for him to spend a year training in the Iron Hills. Dain, whose table he sits at in the evening and whose daughter shares his bed. Fili feels lightheaded, but presses on. “Why does it have to matter? I love you. I’m your One, a-aren’t I?”

But Breya does not echo her confident claim. She bows her head now and looks terribly small. She is younger than him, Fili knows. She has barely earned her first beads – warrior’s beads – which he had carefully unbound from her midnight hair.

“It _shouldn’t_ matter,” she says now. “But I–I thought, well, I guess _dreamed_ my One would be a–a prince, or a noble, from a faraway mountain and all...”

“I am a prince,” Fili says, slowly.

Breya’s eyes widen as realizes what she said. “A–a prince who was not my cousin, I mean. But you’re right. It doesn’t matter. I love you, Fili.”

She kisses him then and they fall back together, her head leaned on his shoulder, but Fili lies awake now.

She is wrong.

He knows it matters.

That’s why he must let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one, alas, would benefit from more than 300 words.
> 
> The short version: Some time before the Quest, Fili spent a year in the Iron Hills to learn more about dwarvish customs. During that time he met and fell in love with a dwarrowdam before realizing she was in fact his cousin.
> 
> ...More about Breya is forthcoming, both in prompts and other future ventures.


	51. Restaurant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo is confounded.

Bilbo’s peaceful little hobbit hole _is not_ and never will be a restaurant, thank you very much.

What utterly confounds him is why thirteen dwarves waltzed over his doorstep as though it was.

 _No_ , Bilbo winces, as he hears yet another heart-wrenching crash from his kitchen, it’s an unruly tavern, or, or a dodgy sort of inn that they’re looking for, certainly _not_ his beloved Bag End. Maybe even an asylum. He’s heard nasty stories of _those sorts_ of escapees before.

Bilbo tiptoes around the disaster that is the clean-up of his dining room and is just about to beg Gandalf to _make them go away_ when a hand tugs at his arm.

“Excuse me, but what should I do with my plate?” asks the woolly one.

“Um –” Bilbo begins to stutter when another dwarf snatches Belladonna’s fine china out of his hand. _Snatches,_ like it’s some common tavern cutlery!

“Here you go, Ori, give it here,” says this one, and Bilbo remembers his name is Fili, or Kili, but it doesn’t matter which as he’s now tossing the plate down the hall to the _other_ one.

“Now – now _see here_!” Bilbo splutters.

 _Asylum, definitely_! he thinks.

 _Oh, bother_.


	52. Movie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili knows how it ends.

“Rada, look out, the dwagon’s coming!”

Thorin glances up and sees a wooden dragon glaring over the back of his chair. A dwarfling’s hand holds it up.

He shifts away accordingly. “Who shall save me from this dragon?”

“Rada!”

Kili flails a wooden miniature armed with an axe, and Thorin smiles. Bofur’s handiwork does sort of look like him. Little-Thorin duels the angry dragon, and the figurines dance back and forth along the back of the chair. Then mini-Thorin falls flat on his belly.

“Oh...the dwagon eated you. Sorry.”

“Indeed,” Thorin frowns. The dragon lands on the arm of his chair, and Kili’s face appears behind it.

“Ewebor is mine!” growls the dragon. Then, “Not so fast, dwagon!” Prince Fili appears with two swords.

“Where’s Kili?” Thorin asks.

Kili whispers, conspiringly. “The dwagon eated him too.”

“Ah.”

“I sawed you eated Rada!” thunders Prince Fili. “Now you will die!”

And soon the dragon dies: Prince Fili slices open its belly, and his uncle and brother tumble free.

“Now Rada’s King-under-the-Mountain!” Kili assures him. “The end!”

Thorin is still sitting with the dead dragon in his lap when Dis returns from her forge. She is surprised to see he is smiling.


	53. Wait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili asks him to wait.

“Fee, wait for me!” Kili cries as he tumbles down the porch steps, tripping over his own feet in his haste to follow into the woods. Fili picks him off the ground and kisses his dirt-smeared brow.

“Next time, m’kay?”

 -

Fili is late for weapons practice with Mister Dwalin, but a raven-haired dwarfling won’t let go of his tunic. “You’re not old enough for training,” Fili tells him, a little crossly. “Next time.”

Kili’s wide eyes say, _Wait for me._

 -

Over the dinner table Kili asks, “Why’s Fili get real swords and I don’t?”

Thorin answers the petulant curl to his lips. “You’re not old enough yet, Kili.”

 -

When Thorin tells Fili he’ll be spending a year with his cousin Dain in the Iron Hills, Kili shuts himself in his room for nights on end. “You _promised_ you’d wait for me,” he says, his eyes disguising his hurt.

It’s not Fili’s choice.

 -

When Thorin asks his heir to join him on the Quest, Kili’s eyes flash fire. “I’m not waiting this time,” he says, defiantly.

- 

There’s no more waiting now.

They don their armor and walk to certain death outside their mountain. Fili catches Kili’s arm, squeezes.

“...Wait for me.”


	54. Patient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is patient.

Fili is a remarkably patient dwarf.

He lets his little brother crawl toward him and latch onto his fingers, gurgling, “Liliii,” because he can’t pronounce his _f_ s yet.

It’s five years before Kili realizes his name isn’t Lili, but Fili doesn’t really care.

When Kili’s older, Fili play-fights with him when no one else will. Kili laughs through their duels, even when Fili knocks the sword from his hands.

Fili wants to wait to duel him for real. But he’s had five more years of practice, and he’s ready long before Kili learns to hold his sword steady.

When he gets his first pair of steel swords, Fili takes Kili out in the orchard and lets him hold one. _One for both of us, see?_ But the sword is too heavy for Kili, and he gets discouraged.

Fili smiles and says he’s just got to get stronger first. They practice climbing trees and swimming and wrestling, and waste away summers in the golden orchard.

One summer, years later, Fili walks by the orchard and sees him with his bow. He watches Kili shoot down apples and realizes, this time, Kili didn’t let Fili wait for him.

He’s never been happier.


	55. Crime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dori joins Thorin's Company.

Dori hates that Nori leads a life of crime.

Dori is no fool: he knows _exactly_ how it goes. Nori insists that he’s clean, and for a few weeks, Dori can sleep at night.

Then little things start showing up around the house.

At first it’s petty thievery, and Dori can maybe ignore it, but then Nori’s nights get later and he’s hiding bruises and boxes of _things_ under the beds and _Dori, you didn’t see this –_

And then Dwalin, captain of the guard, is knocking on their door.

Dori hates that for every bit of respectable dwarf _he_ is, managing his weaver’s workshop and keeping his nose clean, Nori’s out sullying the shreds of their family’s reputation. He hates that Ori has to see the consequences.

He is loath that such is their ill repute that Thorin approaches them with his Quest.

Because Dori is fairly certain that stealing from a dragon who stole from you is _still_ crime.

But he can’t refuse Thorin Oakenshield. His family are still Durins, if only on the wrong side of the sheets.

So Dori closes his shop, dons his dark cloak, and prays Ori will be a better dwarf than them both.


	56. Choke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin holds Frerin one last time.

It rains ash over Azanulbizar.

It clogs in Thorin’s throat when he kneels at his brother’s side. Frerin was always a little too small for a dwarf, and he is smaller now in the confines of his heavy armour, hollow-cheeked, his smile bled away by the arrows that have found weak joints in his armour and his throat.

He is alive, but only just, when Thorin takes his brother’s hand. Frerin’s fingers contract around his; blue eyes open, search out his face, but do not focus.

“You came back.”

“Yes.” Ash settles around his tongue, stealing his voice.

“We’ve...won then?”

“Yes...” They have not won, Thorin thinks. The orcs flee, but they have not regained Khazad-dum; the halls of their fathers are closed to them, and too many lie dying in the blood-red fields.

“...glad, brother...and, brother, ‘m sorry. ” Frerin has started to cough on the words. A trail of scarlet leaves his lips.

“No,” says Thorin. “Do not be sorry. You have fought with honor.”

“’m scared,” Frerin whispers. “’s dark.”

Thorin leans over his younger brother and presses their brows together. It is the warrior’s greeting, and his farewell.

It rains ash over Azanulbizar, and Thorin chokes.


	57. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili disappoints his uncle.

The dwarves scavenge for arms among Erebor’s hoard, but Kili knows he will find no spare arrows here.

He doesn’t mind. He shoulders his quiver, his worn bow that’s trekked halfway across Middle-Earth, but Thorin stops him from rejoining the others.

“You would bring _that_ to battle?”

Fever reigns in Thorin’s eyes. Kili fights back his terror, swallows. “Yes, Rada.”

“A dwarf’s place is in the fray. Only an elf stands behind.” For an instant, there’s a flash of something else in Thorin’s eyes, but it’s not his old self. Kili sees his reflection in the depths of hatred.

“You disappoint me.”

Itechoes in his head when Thorin falls beneath the axe of a monstrous orc, and Kili drops his bow to draw his sword. He stands his ground above Thorin’s broken body, and if only for a little while, he and Fili hold the orcs back.

But then a blow sends him to the ground, choking on his own blood, and _you disappoint me._

Kili tries to speak, but it’s so very hard now.

_Do I still disappoint you, uncle?_

He thinks he sees tears in Thorin’s eyes, but it’s possible they’re only stars.

Fili screams his name.


	58. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili teaches his brother a thing or two.

One summer, Kili drags Fili out into the orchard proclaiming he _will_ learn how to shoot a bow if it’s the last thing he does.

It’s a warm, cloudless day, and Kili’s face is creased with determination, so Fili plays along.

He allows Kili to curl his fingers over the grip and to ply him like a sculptor molds his clay. Kili kicks his boots as he tells him to brace his feet wider; bend at the knees a little; draw the string straight back to the corner of his jaw.

It’s a strange experience. For once, this is _Kili_ ’s area of expertise, and he takes mentorship with a surprising degree of seriousness. He checks Fili’s stance again and nods.

And when Fili fires off his round of arrows, striking exactly none of the apples lined up on the fence, Kili only laughs a little.

“Good try, brother,” he offers, collecting an arrow that fell (embarrassingly) in the dirt. “Here, let’s try again.”

Kili doesn’t check him this time. He stands beside Fili, places his hands over his brother’s hands. Fili draws the bowstring back, but Kili holds it steady.

“Aim true,” he whispers in Fili’s ear.

The apple explodes.


	59. Eat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili and Ori destroy Rivendell's kitchens.

“So what do you think?” Kili asks eagerly.

“Um...” Ori chews the cookie contemplatively. “They’re...not bad.”

“You can tell the truth,” Kili pouts.

“A-all right.” Ori clears his throat and tries to phrase this in the least offensive way possible:

“They’re terrible.”

“Oh.” Kili blinks and slinks off, and Ori is just breathing a sigh of relief to have defused _that_ situation when a bucketful of water splashes the back of his head.

Ori lets out a very ungentlemanly shriek that probably alerts half of Rivendell.

“ _Kili!_ ”

“I’m sorry,” says Kili with a none-too-innocent smile, “you looked a little thirsty.”

Ori is a little ashamed to admit that his instinctive response is to seize a second bucket of water and fling it on Kili’s head.

Kili barks a warcry and responds by dousing Ori in flour. Ori retaliates with elven jam. Kili grabs the honey when –

“What in _Durin’s name_ is going on in here?” thunders Thorin Oakenshield.

Ori and Kili look up, meekly, covered in wet flour. Ori has a fistful of berries readied to fling.

Thorin closes his eyes and sighs. “Ori...I fear Kili is a bad influence on you.”

Ori surprises himself when he chirrups, “I agree!”


	60. Thirst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is hungover.

Fili wakes in the morning with a headache and a terrible thirst.

He groans and nearly shuts his eyes again when he sees Kili sitting on the end of his bed.

“What d’you want?”

“Only to wish you congratulations on your first day being eighty _and_ sober.”

Fili groans, again. “How big a mockery did I make of myself last night?”

“Well, not much...” Kili strokes his chin. “Other than the part where you serenaded me at the high table –”

“ _What?_ ”

Fili sits straight up and promptly groans when this causes the bedchamber to spin out of control around him. Kili barks a laugh.

“I _kid_. You should see your face.”

Fili is decidedly less amused. “Water,” he croaks.

Kili is nice enough to bring him the pitcher and a bowl, and Fili cleans himself up. His reflection does look wretched, he thinks. His braids are all a ragged mess.

Unasked, Kili clambers up on the bed behind him and pulls the silver beads out of his hair. “You’re helpless without me. You know that, right?”

Fili closes his eyes. “Sorry.”

“’Sorry’? It’s only my favourite source of amusement.” Kili half-hugs him from behind. “Love you, pathetic big brother.”


	61. Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili takes after his uncle.

****“ _I shot a rabbit, Rada!_ ”

The dwarfling comes bursting out of the orchard, a bow too large for him tucked beneath his arm, one hand waving for his uncle's attention. Thorin looks up from his pipe and smiles.

“Let's see it.” He leans forward in the porch chair, hands on knees, and schools his expression into seriousness. Kili huffs impatiently to get his hair out of his eyes and holds up the rabbit he caught in the long grass. His face is flushed pink and he quivers, waiting on Thorin's inspection.

He indulges the boy. “You caught that all by yourself? It's bigger than you are.”

Kili beams. “Bigger'n my head, 'least!”

Thorin has to smile now. “Oh, most certainly. Why don't you bring that inside to your ama, and she'll show you how to skin it.”

“Right!” Kili's head bobs and he scurries past him, eager to show Dis his prize. He barely remembers to kick off his boots before entering the house, and he wobbles, attempting to balance bow and rabbit all on one foot.

Thorin closes his eyes after the door slams. _To think he would take after you, Frerin._

_Mahal, we are blessed._


	62. Appear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili looks like his adad.

Fili knows he takes after his adad.

Sometimes, if he screws his eyes shut, he thinks he can remember him. He pictures Avnor as a short man – tall by dwarvish standards – with thick blond hair, a scruffy beard, and a nose that's a little too crooked. He has blue eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

He imagines a man's laugh – because surely, before Fili and Kili, someone had to have made Dis smile. He thinks of a warrior, not in the traditional dwarvish sense, with war-beads and a bloody axe, but a hunter, a Ranger. Sometimes he imagines Avnor had a bow, since Kili loves his so much.

Sometimes, he tries to imagine the sort of man who would give up his own livelihood to help a band of wandering exiles. Sometimes he wonders if he could ever have as much kindness, as much _heart_ as his father. And sometimes he finds that legacy much heavier than the glories of Durin kings and heroes. After all, Fili knows a fair bit about kings.

He does not know how to be a good man.

Sometimes, he wants to ask Dis, but he is afraid the memories haunt her.


	63. Whisper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's something strange about that boy.

_Look, there._

_That's him, the dark-haired one._

_Wasn't he climbing in Hadhod's apple trees last week?_

_Isn't there something strange, something_ Elvish _about that boy?_

The back of Kili's neck prickles. He can hear the whispers. Sometimes he thinks the dwarves know he can hear them. But he does not turn back, does not stop smiling as he pretends to examine the market stall.

Fili's not so good at pretending. His hands start to shake, and Kili has to take the bags he's holding before he drops Dis's vegetables. Ama won't be pleased if their supper's bruised before they get home.

“Get some apples,” Fili mutters.

The stall is down the way. Kili obeys and picks out the choicest apples, and meanwhile he pretends he can't hear Fili threatening the gossip-mongers behind his back. There's a sharp _crack_ and Kili knows an unfortunate dwarf didn't take the bit about knocking out their teeth seriously.

“You don't have to protect me, you know,” he remarks, later.

Fili shrugs. “You're a prince. And you're my brother. They should learn some manners.”

Kili only grins and links arms with him.

“...Hey, Fee, d'you think Ama'll make us an apple pie?”


	64. Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis cannot say goodbye.

Day has not yet broken when they take their leave.

Two ponies – one white, one brown – stand swishing their tails in the lane. A chill mist lifts the hairs on Dis's arms, and she crosses them in front of her as she looks over her sons.

_Her sons._

Fili is quiet and sombre, aged beyond eighty-two years at this parting. He thinks he understands the weight of the quest before them; and yet, he sets off to prove himself against a world that he has never seen, never truly known. But he smiles once for her, and he presses their brows together in the dwarvish farewell.

Kili, on the other hand, is full of smiles this morning. Seventy-seven and eager for adventure, he gives her that wide dwarling's smile and assures her they'll take back their home. _And we'll save the prettiest sapphires in Erebor for you, Ama. Promise._

Dis stands strong until her boys are gone; until the morning mist folds around them and steals the ponies' steps away. Only then does she sink down on the porch steps and weep for her children, for Mahal knows they will not be children when she sees them again.


	65. Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They won't hear him scream.

“ _Bring up the bone-breaker!_ ”

The Goblin King rises up, jowls quivering, and his ominous outstretched finger pinpoints Kili. Kili, the only dwarf among the Company who lacks a proper beard; Kili, who's never quite grown into a dwarf's strong shoulders; Kili, whose eyes now widen in terror.

“Start with the youngest!”

At once the goblins clamber over one another to get their claws on him. And then the fiends are _everywhere,_ jabbering and snapping and digging in the dwarves' pockets for trinkets and filchable knives. One grasps at Fili's braids and he flings it off, already thrusting his way forward.

“Kili! _No!_ ”

He tries to reach him, but it's not the stone-giants tearing them apart this time: it's the thick of the Company, it's a writhing mass of goblin bodies and spindly fingers. A roar like a mountain-lion's tears from his throat as he pushes and shoves and almost feathers his brother's blue hood –

The explosion knocks him straight into Kili. They roll across the platform and land in a tangle, and Fili's fists clutch at Kili's cloak.

When he hears the Grey Wizard's voice, Fili could cry.

They won't have his brother's scream. Not today.


	66. Fail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili faces tough competition.

The man-sized bow, though sized for a youth, easily dwarfs him.

Kili holds his breath as he draws the string back, taut; lines his eye with the painted target; releases, and feels the string snap from his fingertips.

Kili lowers the bow and blows his hair from his eyes. He has missed the centre again. Not by too much, but enough to grate on his nerves. He _knows_ he can do better.

Next to him, Bard the Bowman shatters another bull's eye.

Kili huffs.

It is the _bow._ It's too big for him, and he wastes too long lining up each shot. Kili tells himself this, stubbornly, as he draws another arrow from his quiver. If he hadn't lost his own rugged bow somewhere in Mirkwood, he might've stood a chance.

As it is, his first shot had missed the target entirely, and he hasn't done _that_ since he's been a dwarfling. He can only imagine what Bard thinks.

Kili distracts himself nocking the arrow. A veil of sweat-streaked hair falls across his eyes, and the world fades away.

_Forget Bard._

_Forget the bow._

He is a bloody dwarvish _archer_.

Kili grits his teeth and lets the arrow fly.


	67. Confused

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is numb.

Fili is bleeding, but he barely notices.

Kili is worse. His brother, who spent the last hours thrashing in a fever dream, is suddenly, deathly quiet. Not a protest passes his lips as they haul him up from the floor. A knife, gory with orc-blood, clatters from his limp hand.

Fili's ears are ringing.

Oin pushes through the crowd around Bard's kitchen table and bends over Kili's leg. Oin is a master healer, Fili tells himself, but when the bandages peel wetly from the festered wound, he sees how terribly tired the medic looks. Something breaks inside of him.

Kili screams.

Someone tells him to sit down. Fili refuses, he thinks, but then there are hands insisting. He twists his gaze back to his brother's bedside.

The elf tends to Kili now, murmuring words his dazed mind won't process. Fili doesn't know why she's here, where she came from. He sits numbly and wishes Oin would go back to his side. Yet every heavy line in the old dwarf's face tells him Kili is beyond his help now.

Fili doesn't know if the elf can save him, but he tries to believe.

Sigrid's hand touches his arm. "Fili, you're bleeding."


	68. Smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is Thorin's hope.

Fili is born during the long summer, eighteen years after King Thrain's disappearance.

Holding his sister-son in his arms, Thorin feels a strange stirring in his chest: after too many years, his heart reawakens from the ashes. This feeling has a name. _Hope._

It had never found them in the alien lands of Ered Luin, and it is somehow fitting that Dis should bring it to them now. Her voice rang above the others, urging him to stay, to remember his people, after the rumours of their father's demise. This is his reason to stay now: this boy, this hope.

_The line of Durin is strong._

He will never again leave his people alone, lost and leaderless.

Dis's son receives no gold, no tidings, no tithes from kin or Mankind. And yet, their people come: Dis sits on the porch with her golden-haired boy on her lap, Avnor's hands on her shoulders, and smiles in thanks. The prince's homage is flour and beets; milk and cream; cloth and items for the home, forged in Blue Mountain iron.

No gold is exchanged on his naming-day, but Thorin knows Fili holds something more precious. He need look no further than Dis's smile. 


	69. Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili needs some rescuing.

She is a shieldmaiden, and skilled at that, by the twin beads that wink like crystals in her dark hair. She wears the braids and well-combed beard of a noble atop a robe of midnight blue.

She laughs at him.

"Welcome to the Iron Hills, Fili of Durin's line."

Fili searches for some clever remark, reconsiders. Something about the way her eyes gleam like icy jewels makes him self-conscious in his dusty traveller's cloak, but he hopes the hall's shadows hide his discomfiture.

"How do you know my name?"

Mahal. At least he does not stutter.

The dwarrowdam steps closer. "It was not hard to guess. No one else would be headed to the mining district in the middle of the night."

Fili glimpses a heavy-headed mace at her side and is suddenly, vehemently glad she recognized him in the dark.

"This is my first time in these halls. Or, underground." Fili does not know why he lets that confession slip. He turns away, shamed.

"How is it?"

Fili looks up into keen eyes like the stifled stars, and he can't say it then. "...Different."

She only smiles.

"Breya. That's my name. Come, Fili the Sleepwalker. I'm taking you home."


	70. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thrain leaves.

Thrain's Company reach the eaves of the Greenwood by evenfall, and Balin warns him the woods are unsafe in the dark.

Thrain scoffs. "And what does a hero of Azanulbizar fear? The wood-elves and their king?"

Balin hangs his head, unspeaking. Dwalin, with whom Thrain has fought in arms, dutifully keeps his brother's silence.

They think he does not know. But he sees the daggers in their smiles, the fleeted looks toward his ring. He hears their whispers.

Thrain is no fool, and so he presses into the shadows alone. He does not fear the denizens of the forest, nor whispers of disloyalty.

Who can he trust but himself? He is the bearer of his father's tarnished legacy. In exile, his people weakened. They forgot. They failed him at Azanulbizar, turning cowardly from the gates, and they fail him now with deadly whispers in the dark.

Shadows fold around him, soft like a cloak. The whispers flee before him. He is alone now. They cannot touch him. They hiss, spurned.

Thrain laughs. "Come, traitors!"

From the woods, then, the whispers take monstrous form. Thrain opens his arms, dares them.

He fights them off for a time, but he is alone.


	71. Fast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili holds on.

 "Catch me if you can!"

Kili perches in the top boughs of the oak tree, light as a raven and grinning madly.

Fili shuts his eyes. He clings to the trunk below, somehow unable to move. He's not Kili, who's spent hours learning to climb in the orchard with nimble ease. Dwarves aren't meant to leave the ground: his belly knots as he presses himself tighter against the tree.

If he doesn't look down, if he holds fast, he tells himself, he _won't fall._

"Hurry up, Fee!" Kili calls down, kicking his heels in the air. The tree quivers; Fili's belly lurches.

 _I can't catch you,_ Fili thinks. _Not this time._

- 

 "You're so slow, Fee," Kili laughs.

Fili ignores him, hauls himself up on the branch. They're too big to climb in the quavering oak now: they only make it three-quarters up. Yet Fili leans across the trunk to where his brother is sitting, and pokes him in the forehead.

"Caught you."

Disgruntled, Kili rubs at his brow. "What's that for?"

Fili smiles. "You're like a raven, brother. If I _didn't_ catch you, you'd fly away."

Wind stirs their perch. Kili rocks, eyes to the sky. "I'd wait," he disagrees.


	72. Slow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Company cross the Desolation.

On the western bank of the River Running, they draw the boats ashore, load their gear onto the ponies and stow the remainder beneath a tent, and bid farewell to the Laketown guard.

The lands ahead stretch on, barren and desolate. Long tracts bear neither brush nor grass; the ground lies cracked and parched.

The journey now is slow and silent. The Company dare no songs, no laughter in the land that echoes for miles. The ponies plod in a straggling line, heads low, as anxious as their masters.

Autumn has waned into winter. Grey skies greet them from the north, and even though the sun is bleak, it is not long before dampness clings to Fili's brow and the back of his neck. Sometimes, when the sun sets along their flank, the land up ahead shimmers in a cloak of heat.

It's not right, the blackened corpses of trees, the shrivelled patches of starved grass. The Desolation defies the winter snows Fili can see flaking to the north. Nothing can survive this curse. Not even them.

Soon they will breach the Mountain's shadow; soon he might breathe again, he tells himself.

He watches clouds darken Thorin's brow and prays.


	73. Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The caravans return to Erebor.

Silver ravens flutter over a field of blue.

Absent is the dragon-smoke, the fire that once ravaged these blackened trees. The trees now bow beneath heavy snow; and silver-and-blue banners fly above the Front Gate. Even the weather-worn stone sentinels loom taller now, freed from an age of weariness.

Dis nearly cries at the sight.

Around her, the caravans from Ered Luin halt and jostle. Dwarves gape openly and shout. Eager ponies press forward into one another, wheels scrape, and guards tersely urge the haphazard troop onward in an orderly manner.

But when the princess dismounts, her people seamlessly part before her. Alone, she makes her way up the ravine to the shadow of Erebor's gates, and the party that waits there.

At first, Dis does not recognize Thorin's Company, lessened in number, outfitted in gilded mail and fresh scars. But there will be time to dwell on their grievances. They sense her mind, and step aside.

Dis gazes upon the King Under the Mountain in fur-trimmed finery, her breath short. His lips twitch; he knows he is not the Dwarf she wished to see crowned.

Yet he moves forward alone, embraces her, and whispers.

"Welcome home, amad."

Dis weeps.


	74. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dis watches Erebor burn.

Dis has never felt as frightened as when Ada looms above her, smelling of burning. His eyes smoulder.

"We must go. Now."

Ama rises from her favourite armchair. "Thrain -?"

"Dragon," he says, brusquely. "We must go."

Their embroidery lesson is forgotten. Ama's hands tug her down the halls, toward tunnels in the heart of the mountain that Dis does not know. She feels dizzy. The air thickens. Miles overhead, she imagines thunder and screams.

Grandfather joins them in the gloom, and Frerin. Thorin is missing; he went hunting. Dis cries out. The drake's footsteps sunder the stone over their heads. They will be crushed here, beneath the earth, and her brother could already be dead.

Frerin takes her hand then. "Close your eyes," he whispers. "It's like hide-and-seek."

So Dis obeys. Tears track silently down her cheeks as Frerin leads her through the tunnels. Her brother is brave; he never falters.

She disobeys him once, after she feels night wind on her face. Dis looks back at their mountain shrouded with smoke, the trees afire, and Frerin's face pale like the moon. She shudders. But he holds her hand tight, so Dis tries her hardest not to be afraid.


	75. Positive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili is certain it's poison.

When at last he is alone, Kili allows himself to wince.

The rest of the Company have migrated to the next room, mulling over plans to cross the Desolation. Kili can hear Rada's low voice rumbling steadily and, now and then, a disapproving "Hmm!" from their Hobbit.

The mutterings fall away from the window seat where he's perched as Kili pulls back the corner of the bandage on his thigh. He's nearly bled through these ones, too. At this rate he'll have to start tearing up Bard's linens.

The wince turns into a hiss. Kili rolls his head back, counts to ten in his head.

Then he rips the wet bandage from his skin.

Kili's teeth clench, his eyes water, and several heartbeats pass before he can breathe again. Then he shudders, gropes at the roll of white cloth next to him.

The wound festers. The arrowhead came loose intact, so his next bet is poison. He's seen enough puncture wounds to be sure of it.

The question remains,  _how long_?

Erebor is within their sights; and yet... And yet it might take days still for them to reach the Gate. Longer still, for Bilbo to do whatever he's planned to do with Smaug.

Rada didn't ask for him to join their plans. Rada knows... no. It's not certain. Oin never  _said_  it was orc poison.

But he can't ignore the whisper that he might not live to see Erebor restored.

Kili's hands shake tying off the bandage. He's glad he's alone.

"Hey. Brother."

Fili abandons the others and takes a seat beside him.

"Are we leaving?"

"Not until tomorrow."

Kili nods, and if he leans a little too tiredly against Fili, his brother says nothing. Yet an arm falls around his shoulders, protectively.

...Kili is glad he's not alone.


	76. Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili's not the littlest!

"He's so little!" laughs Kili.

"Keep your voice down," Dis reminds him. In her lap, the auburn-haired dwarfling opens his eyes; she hums over his gurgled protest. "Shh, mimuh."

"I wasn't  _that_  little," Kili now whispers.

"You were," says Fili. "You're  _still_  little."

"Your cousin's the littlest for now," says Lagertha. The Firebeard shield-maiden, usually fierce, has an amused gleam in her eyes as the boys peer down at her son. "Soon he'll be as big as you. Maybe bigger."

"He's a handsome lad, Lagertha," Dis approves.

"With his father, how could he not be?" Lagertha grins broadly.

Fili, meanwhile, looks pensive. "Can...can we hold him, too?"

Dis waits on Lagertha's nod. "All right. You hold on tight." She lifts the fur-swaddled dwarfling and shows Fili how to support his head. Kili watches, curious.

"He's heavy." Fili scrunches his nose, and his brother laughs.

The commotion stirs Gimli, who whines anew. He wriggles and Fili holds on, looking mildly apprehensive.

"How'd I make him stop?"

Kili intervenes. "He thinks we're scary 'cause we're big." He sticks out his tongue. "But we're not, really!"

"Ga!" gurgles Gimli, snatching at his cousin's hair.

Lagertha chuckles in Dis's ear. "How's that? Fast friends."


	77. Upset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin will not let go.

"He is not ready."

Balin sighs, turning from the office window. "The lad's nearly eighty. When do you plan on telling him?"

"He _is not ready._ "

Balin tries, valiantly, "When you were of such an age -"

"- I had already fought one war, lost a brother, and shouldered a king's burdens," Thorin reminds. "I will not lose him in the same way."

"Thorin's right," grunts Dwalin. "His sword arm's decent enough, but he's not of a soldier's mind. Doesn't understand what it means to fight."

"He is not ready."

Balin's face creases, but at length he nods. "I follow your will, as always. But you cannot deny me this, Thorin: you know why Dain only extended his guardianship to one."

"No. But it does not matter. Dis would not allow them both to leave."

"It _does_ matter, Thorin. Dain follows the Old Ways. He knows what the lad is. What role he must play."

"Kili will never be ready."

Balin looks on sadly. Thorin closes his eyes. What cannot be spoken, he sees: the arrows in Frerin's throat. The Oath burned in his skin.

"You understand, do you not? I cannot doom my sister-son as I doomed my brother."


	78. Kitchen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili never asked for this favour.

Every morning begins with the two of them in the kitchen: Fili, slouched on a stool, blinking sleep from his eyes; and Kili with a comb between his teeth, far too chipper for the early hour.

Kili likes to chatter while he works. Fili answers in monosyllables and tries to deduce what's for breakfast. By this time, of course, the crackle-snap of firewood fills the kitchen. There's coffee set to boil; he can smell it now.

By the time two braids are done, Fili is wakeful enough for their usual game.

"You don't have to do this, you know."

"'Course I do." Kili sticks out his tongue, accidentally drops the comb. "Mahal knows one of us should look princely."

"I can braid," Fili says, disgruntled, while Kili retrieves the comb.

"Sure, but you'd have to wake up first. This is faster."

Fili grimaces, but he's used to this sort of teasing. He reaches back and ruffles Kili's hair, which he never bothers to tame in the mornings.

"Thanks, whelp."

When four braids are done, Fili is wakeful enough to fetch his own coffee. They sit on the porch, cradling steaming mugs. The sky mellows.

"How was the hunt?" Fili asks.


	79. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Avnor takes his son into the woods.

"Deer tracks," deems the boy.

"Indeed?" Avnor looks up briefly from the trap he's been cleaning. Seeing the focus on the lad's face, he smiles, brushes his hands clean in the snow, and rises.

He goes unnoticed. The boy's brow scrunches as he extends a hand, comparing it to the print and its miniature dewclaw. "Oh, it's small. A fawn, prolly. And..." He hops up, now scanning the forest floor intently.

Avnor smiles.

"Here! This one's the ama."

"They're headed down into the hills, where the snow's less deep." Avnor points at the roughened tops of a clump of winterweed. "They're looking for food there."

The boy beams. "Can we follow them, Ada?"

"Well, now. Your ama won't be too pleased if the pies go without meat." Avnor chuckles, hefting his trapping bag. But he ruffles the boy's hair and promises, "Someday I'll take you tracking with me. Once you've gotten a bit more practice with your bow, of course."

"But I can shoot squirrels already."

"Deer are much tougher than squirrels, no?"

Avnor laughs, again, while this is mulled over. "Come, Fili, let's bring Ama her squirrels."

They walk home, hand-in-hand. Avnor looks back over their tracks and smiles.


	80. Ignorant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili wonders if the stars have names.

“Do the stars have names?” Kili asks one night.

Fili had been telling him a story he'd heard in the neighbouring Mannish village: an evil sorcerer had placed a curse on the hero so that he would never see the sun. But when night came, and the stars rose, the warrior recognized the Evenstar and followed it home.

“The stars have many names,” says Thorin.

Kili scrunches his nose. “ _Dwarvish_ names.”

“Elves and Men live beneath the stars, and name them to find their way. Our night is underground. We see no stars.”

The answer bemuses Kili. Clearly, he can see stars every night outside his window. He tells Thorin so.

“But _we_ see stars. Fili n'me.”

“Come here.” Kili obeys, and Thorin rests a hand in his hair. “You've grown up above ground in this place. The stars are real to you.”

Rada's voice is sad. He says these things often: they don't know the true way their people live, underground. They ask questions about things that already make sense to Thorin. Maybe that's why he's sad.

“If they're real, can we name them?” asks Kili.

Thorin smiles. “Yes. I suppose you can.”


	81. Fool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hobbits are naive.

Bilbo leans too far out and squeaks as sand crumbles beneath his toes.

"Careful!" Fili warns.

"Wouldn't want to lose our burglar!" Kili adds cheerily.

"Th-thanks." Bilbo straightens. "But the river's not _that_ fast. I do know how to swim."

"Oh, of course," Kili brushes him off, "we have complete faith in your swimming ability, Mr. Boggins!"

"Erm, well, thank you...?" says the bemused hobbit.

Fili looks at his brother's innocent smile, and raises an eyebrow. He leans a hand on Bilbo's shoulder, confidingly. "He meant the carp."

"The...carp?" Poor Bilbo is more lost than ever.

"Aye. The _murderous_ carp." In a heartbeat smiling Kili is gone: he implores Bilbo with wide anxious eyes, voice lowered. "They grow to the size of a dwarf, you know. Their teeth are like knives. And once they've got you in their grip..."

Bilbo squeaks. Kili's hands have clamped on his wrist, vice-like.

"You'd be just a morsel to them..."

"Well. Well, thank you for the warning."

Kili lets Bilbo wander off, shaken. He cocks his head, smiles.

"Wait for it."

It's Dwalin who goes to bathe first; and poor Bilbo, huffing and puffing, struggles to pull him back.

Thorin finds his nephews laughing.


	82. Afraid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They both miss home.

Over the creak of the old house, Ori can hear singing.

He lays aside his quill, and the tale of their coming to Laketown, and plods from his room to investigate. Some of the Company cluster around the fire downstairs: Dori perches in the big armchair, fussing over what seems to be Kili's battered coat; Bifur fiddles with a chain of flowers, muttering as he ties them in knots; Oin dozes with his ear-trumpet in his lap, the herbs he'd been sorting strewn on a cloth before him. Bofur plays a little melody on his flute, but it is Fili who sings.

Ori lingers on the top step, breath caught.

Over many an evening of songs and tales around a flickering fire, Thorin's deep bass told of faraway misty mountains and forgotten gems. Yet Fili's voice was always lighter, and he sang of rolling hills and green vales. Where Thorin gives words power, Fili gives his  _life_ , and Ori sinks down on the stair to listen, careful not to make a sound.

It's a shame Fili won't, can't sing for his uncle, fearing his disapproval. Ori thinks Thorin would not mind terribly.

They sing for the same reason, after all.


	83. Prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel is alone.

Tauriel is alone.

The man she would call Adar has betrayed her trust. Now, shamed by the memory of a crush long-since renounced, she wonders why she trusted in the first place.

And so, fuming, she wanders the dungeons, away from her own kind's pettiness and pride.

The dark-haired dwarf offers her respite. There is something soothing in his unrefined manner, so far removed from the haughtiness of elves. They speak of stars and fire-moons, and he reminds her of a place she once tread, where all was light and warmth.

_Strange_ , she thinks,  _that a dwarf should be so amicable, when my kin would see me humiliated_. For a moment, she forgets her mistreatment, lost once again in that bright field of stars.

But soon she catches herself.  _Humiliated_. She had been too quick to trust in the generosity of her king; she would not do the same with this dwarf. Amicable though he may be, is he not still an enemy, a prisoner?

...yet, is she not also a prisoner, confined to this decaying forest by her callous warden?

These thoughts rekindle her ire. The dwarf continues spinning tales of stars, but Tauriel's reveries are at an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to Menelvagor for his help characterizing Tauriel. :3


	84. Sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili doesn't quite understand how it works.

"Mister Balin?"

"Hm?" The loremaster glances up from his letters. He blinks and removes his monocle.

The eldest prince sits surrounded by the Longbeards' records. Balin had asked the lads to memorize the Dwarvish kings of the Third Age. It is a reading exercise, mainly, and predictably Kili is nowhere in sight.

"I'm confused." Fili scrunches his brow at his current reading. "This says that udad Thrain married umad Bryndis, but that's his sister's name."

"Indeed, that is so. The royal line bears a long-standing tradition of incest, to preserve the purity of Durin's blood."

"What's incense?" Kili appears suddenly from behind the pile of books, scrubbing at his eyes.

" _Incest_  -" Balin begins.

"S'when you marry your brother or sister," Fili tells him.

"Eww!"

"It was not an uncommon practice among the First Dwarves," Balin continues, as Kili makes faces. "Indeed, it served to preserve a family's wealth; to prevent divisions among kin..."

"But ama didn't marry either of  _her_  brothers," Fili observes.

"Dis chose what she thought best." It is not his place to relate the boys' heritage. He waits for further questions, but Fili only looks thoughtful.

Instead Kili prods him, anxious.

"So...I hafta marry Fee now?"


	85. Hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili hates wearing them.

He sits rigid on the stool, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

"You've  _never_  done this?" Ori clarifies.

"Few times, maybe." Kili can't quite stay stiff; he fiddles with his tunic hem, restlessly. "But I was a dwarfling."

Ori shakes his head. "Well, surely Fili taught you -"

"Fili?" Kili snorts. "Fili can't braid to save his life."

"Oh? Then who's responsible for his oh-so-regal braids?"

"Me."

Ori lifts an eyebrow and then regards the thick strands in his hands. "Then why am  _I_  the one braiding your hair?"

"You won't be soon." Kili makes a grab for the half-finished braid, but Ori swats him.

" _You_  dragged me out here. I'm not leaving until you're so princely your ama wouldn't recognize you."

Kili slouches and glowers at nothing. Ori resumes braiding.

"...Why don't you ever braid your hair?" he asks.

"Because. It gets in my face, and it's a bother in the mornings."

"And it's not, to braid Fili's?"

"No."

Ori won't understand their ritual, so he remains silent. When it's done, and Ori hands him the glass, a raven-haired prince stares back. As expected, Kili looks ridiculous.

"You could be regal, too," says Ori.

Kili considers, shrugs.

"...But why?"


	86. Alarm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili meets a lady in the lake.

She balances on the pier, sunlight in her hair: Fili blinks, and the girl vanishes.

He must be mad.

He looks back at his companions, jesting about the Master's feast. Has no one else seen her...?

The water ripples.

Oh,  _Mahal_. He's not mad.

"Fili!" someone shouts, but then the water closes over his head and there's nothing. The Long Lake receives him in jaws of ice: Fili's chest seizes, he can't breathe. For a terrifying heartbeat, he is too stunned to even flounder as the darkness drags him downward.

Then someone yanks him back.

" -  _idiot_ ," Fili hears when he breaks the surface. It's Sigrid, looking cross.

He coughs on the words. "Sh-she fell in...I don't..."

But by then other hands reach out: the Dwarves haul him atop the dock. Fili stands, shakily.  _Where's Sigrid?_

A heartbeat passes. Then another.

Fili's heart jolts against his ribs when one, two heads reappear. Sigrid calls out, and the dwarves pull them up. The other girl stumbles, falls. Pale hair mats her face. She clutches herself, shivering.

Fili drapes his slightly less-wet furs around her shoulders. "Are you all right?"

She looks at him, wide-eyed.

Then Sigrid shoos him urgently away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again... Future prompts have more to say on the subject of my original characters. :3


	87. Genius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin sees what the king cannot.

Dis finds her brother sitting out by the fields, pipe smoke spiralling ponderously in the fading light.

The air is chill. She folds her arms across her chest. "You disappeared. Adad worries."

Slowly, Thorin lowers his pipe and looks at her. "Does he worry for my sake?"

_No._

Dis imagines Thrain pacing his office and muttering, an unknown wildness in his remaining eye. The healers say he grieves. Dis cannot be so certain.

She cannot bear his presence alone, these days.

They sit together on the hillside, their backs to the setting sun and the Longbeards' temporary homes. To the east, the brown-and-yellow Dunlands sprawl, scattered with spindly trees. The goats ruminate among them, plainting softly.

"We do nothing but linger here," Thorin says at last. "We must move on."

"Adad..."

"It has been ten years, Dis. The mines run dry. We struggle to feed our people. Thrain must see these signs. There is nothing for us here."

"You tried to show him once. He did not listen."

Thorin nods, jaw tensing. "Should he be equally blind now, we will go without."

"You speak treason," whispers Dis.

Thorin turns to her. "Is it not treason to let our people die?"


	88. Negative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Dwarf, without his beard, is nothing.

"Oh,  _Mahal,_ " is all Fili says when he sees him.

Kili hisses at his brother. Only when the door is shut, and they're safely ensconced away from Rada's hearing, he drops his hunting bag and loosens his scarf.

"Kili, what have you done?" Fili voices bleakly.

His chin is chafed raw from the cold; it itches, too. Kili rubs at it absently, his eyes still over-bright. "Followed the Rangers, Fee. And there was an  _elf_  with 'em. Have you ever seen an elf shoot?"

"Kili, your beard -"

"It'll grow back." Kili brushes aside his concerns. "Besides, we tracked a family of roe deer. I got off the first shot. I took down a doe, Fee."

"Kili,  _why?_ " Fili still stares at his bare face.

Kili bites his cheek. Fili clearly doesn't care about the deer, or the hunt, or the elf.

"They'd never teach me anything if they knew I was a Dwarf."

"But a Dwarf without a beard..." Fili stares at him helplessly.

"Is nothing," Kili finishes, flatly. " _I'm_  nothing. Dwarvish archers don't exist, you know." His face itches, and he pulls up his scarf. "It's the only way."

"It's not," says Fili, quietly, but Kili doesn't hear.


	89. Flood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili is in shock.

_Hold on._

Kili doesn't know who shouts it.

But there's water everywhere, rushing, roaring, spinning him round like a dwarfling's lost toy. It's in the barrel, too, dragging at his leaden limbs. If it weren't for the chill, there would be pain, the wrenching pain of the arrow shaft tearing from his leg; as it is, he feels his body numbing. Shock encroaching.

 _Hold on._  His knuckles whiten on the barrel's rim.

The water's higher now. Suddenly the barrel twists, Kili slips, and he can't see. He can't  _breathe._  His eyes burn. His mouth is open. Kili clamps his jaws, but it's too late, water, thick and salty and cruel, penetrates his lungs and steals his breath.

A heartbeat too long, and he breaks the surface again. Cold wind slaps his cheeks; Kili coughs, shaking and spluttering. Light bursts and fades in his eyes. His heart thuds against his ribs, sluggishly. A world away there's pain, there's an arrowhead wrenching in sinew.  _Hold on,_  someone screams, but his trembling legs just won't hold him up.

From far away a sodden arm falls around his shoulders. Fili seizes his barrel, struggles to paddle them both toward shore.

"Kili.  _Kili_ , hold on!"


	90. Bomb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin pays Bombur's family a visit.

Helgi meets him at the door, hastily wiping her hands on her apron. "Oh...evening, milord! We weren't expecting you...we'd have put on another roast..."

"This won't take long," Thorin assures her.

Inside, Bifur sits by the hearth, bent over a half-shaped block of wood. The youngest red-haired child watches, avid.

Bofur approaches, smiling, and doffs his hat. "What brings us this honour, Thorin Oakenshield?"

"I must ask another favour of you, loyal friends. The greatest of all."

Helgi fidgets as Bombur emerges from the kitchen to hear. "Must you discuss this in front of the children?"

"They might as well know of our heroic deeds," says Bofur, but his smile has faded. "Might as well sit down."

Brambur, who is near Kili's age, brings him a mug of tea. Thorin nods.

"I have not forgotten your service at Azanulizar. I have no right to ask more of you now, nor anything to offer beyond the glory that awaits, should we succeed."

After a moment, Bombur nods. Bofur, too. Bifur mutters over his whittling.

"Can I count on the strength of your arms at my side?"

A look passes between husband and fearful wife; between brothers. The decision is made.

"Aye."


	91. Hospital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel leaves.

The dwarf's eyelids flicker. He searches in the dark; muddled words slip from his tongue.

"...Do you think...she could've loved me...?"

Tauriel freezes.

His fingers brush her own, impelling her to look back upon him. His brow flushes with fever; his cheeks are hollow; yet his eyes remain too bright, too hopeful.

_Could I?_

For a moment, for his pain, she tries.

But they are too dissimilar, Dwarf and Silvan Elf, an exiled king's sister-son and another king's willful exile. Their starlit paths cross, but cannot be made to twine. He belongs with his kinfolk, who worry at his bedside. She faces Thranduil's justice if she is found here.

She must go.

The heat of feverish skin grazes her palm, but Tauriel's heart is cold.

A moment is all she can offer: she stoops and kisses his sweat-streaked brow, as gentle as a lover.

" _Ce polthannen, pe vi cuil eges cuiannenc - nae, vi cuil sen ú-polthon_."

The moment passes.

At the door, Tauriel pauses and looks back at the Dwarves clustered around the dining table. The dark-haired one sleeps peacefully now, smiling.

 _I am not the maiden you seek,_  Tauriel echoes, silently.  _She walks amidst stars._

_I walk alone._


	92. Trap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fili is afraid for him.

When Fili shuts his eyes, he hears nothing but the warg's snuffling breath.

The Company press in to either side, hardly breathing. To his right, the shaft of Bifur's boar spear jams uncomfortably against his ribs.

When he looks left, though, there's Kili.

Fili reaches for his brother's hand before his thoughts catch up with him, as if that sparse contact alone could be a shield against the world's terrors. In that moment, they are scared dwarflings again; the warg and its rider, thunder shuffling over their heads.

Then he realizes the way Thorin is looking at Kili.

 _No,_  he thinks, instinctively.  _Don't make him do this, Rada._

Kili locks his jaw, tightens an arrow against his bowstring, and a voice in Fili's mind whispers,  _Who else?_

He must trust Kili. Kili, and his beloved bow.

Fili's arm slackens against the rock. Kili doesn't spare a glance for him; Kili hasn't seen him. Instead his brother inhales sharply, squares his shoulders, and plunges away from the shelter of the outcropping.

A shadow falls overhead. The warg has seen him. The beast lets out a ferocious snarl, but already Kili takes his stand, draws, aims.

Fili shuts his eyes and prays.


	93. Celebrate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili loves a good party.

Durin's Day remains Kili's favourite time of year, and not just because the feast occasionally coincides with his birthday.

It's then that their sleepy village streets come alive with market stalls and strings of jewel-coloured lanterns. Fili takes early leave from the forge, and the two of them venture from stall to stall, tasting hot meat buns, sugared almonds, and fresh apple tarts.

The last moon of autumn waxes in the early evening sky, a disk of pure white. The first stars glimmer above her like a crown. Winter's chill lingers in the air, but it's not yet so cold that they can't sit on the stoop of the tavern and savour their spiced mead.

Muffled songs echo on the night air. In the lane, dwarflings play at hunting dragons. Across the way, there's an axe-throwing game, which Fili eyes intently. Later, when there's less to drink and he's feeling bolder, he'll test his hand. Kili's more interested in pinning the tails on wargs and bobbing for apples.

He leans across his brother's shoulder.

"Fee, when you're king, I want  _every_  day to be Durin's Day."

Fili smirks and ruffles his hair.

"You only say that 'cause it's your birthday."


	94. Old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before the Battle, they reminisce.

A tankard thumps down next to him. "Bloody dawn tomorrow, Cousin. No need to look so glum."

Fili blinks in confusion at the smiling dwarrowdam. Then he blinks again. "Breya?"

She beams. Breya Shatter-arm is no longer a scruff-faced lass - she is a warrior grown, and beautiful. A studded mace sways at her hip as she sits beside him.

"Then again, I don't s'pose a soft heart like yours would understand."

Fili objects. "You loved my soft heart once."

"It was not your softness I loved, Fili." She smiles, absently. "Your tongue, now...Do you remember, how you'd talk your way 'round your old master?"

"Balin," says Fili. "And maybe I did, but I seem to recall you're the one who'd hide his reading glasses."

"Mm. And send him on a wild goose chase to ada's library."

Fili raises an eyebrow. "Delaying my studies by at least an hour."

"You didn't regret it then." Breya grins, unabashed. "We were thick as a pair of thieves, weren't we?"

"And no more innocent."

"And whose fault was that?" She flicks his moustache.

For an instant, it's too real; his smile wavers painfully. Breya withdraws.

"I loved you once, you know."

"...I know."


	95. Disappear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She'll disappear when he's not watching.

It's not Sigrid who opens the door for her.

Instead of her friend, it's one of the short folk, with tousled tawny hair and braids in his moustache. She remembers them wet.

His eyes widen. He knows her, too.

She flees.

"Wait -" the dwarf calls.

She knows the bridges and nooks of Laketown, but she can't move quickly enough. One misstep and he's there, clutching her arm. She wavers but doesn't fall.

"Wait. Can't I at least know your name?"

She freezes.

_Can't._

_I can't say it._

These words, the dwarf doesn't hear. They never seem to hear her: not papa, not her tutor, not the village children. The children are mean and call names. Sometimes, they trip her in the street. But papa is worse.

He's pretty, and not so fearsome-looking as papa. Fili is his name, she thinks. He was at papa's feast.

She tries. "I..."

The words are beyond her reach. Sea-birds scatter along the docks.

She shakes her head, wants to cry, wants the dwarf to understand.  _Can't. Don't look, please. She'll disappear._

"Please," says the dwarf.

She draws a breath.

"...Nia," she says then, tremulously.

"My name...Nia."

A wondering, shy smile illuminates her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A study in writing from the perspective of a character with expressive, or non-fluent, aphasia.


	96. Language

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo learns about Khuzdul.

"Might I read what you've written?" Bilbo asks.

Lifting his head from the tome, Ori blots ink on his thumb. "Oh! Well, I would let you, Mr. Baggins, but it's all in Khuzdul."

"I suppose that makes sense," nods Bilbo.

Ori sucks absently at the ink smudge. "It's for secrecy, mostly. If we...If something were to happen, we wouldn't want our records read in the wrong hands. But we'd want our kin to know. Well. It wouldn't be  _my_  kin, I suppose, but Thorin has relations in the Iron Hills..."

"I see." Bilbo doesn't much like considering how they might all die horribly on this Quest. By his nervous rambling, Ori doesn't, either.

"Is it difficult to learn? Only it's rather silly for you to speak Westron just for my benefit."

Ori reddens. "Oh. It's not a problem, really." He nibbles his thumb. "Khuzdul is...It's our heritage. We speak as the Seven Fathers did, or near enough to them, anyway. Uttering their words before a non-Dwarf would be...Well. Bad."

"Hmph!" Bilbo disagrees.

"Maybe it's silly. But it's not my place to go against Thorin." Ori hesitates. "When it's finished, though...I'll translate a copy, if you'd like."

"Very much." Bilbo smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side Note: Prompts 96 through 100 are Writer's Choice, the themes devised on the fly. :)


	97. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili mopes.

Kili flicks the obsidian stone into the air and catches it again. Runes brush against his thumb.

_The stars are memory, precious and pure._

_Like your promise._

There are no stars now: the air is rife with sea-birds' squalling. They're fighting over scraps on the docks.

He wonders if there's bits of orc-flesh left down there.

He shifts, uncomfortably. The railing of the balcony digs into his back. The damp air disagrees with his leg: the wound aches, dully. But it hasn't shot with pain like fire again. Not since last night.

Kili flips the runestone into the air again.

Sigrid sticks her head out. "Breakfast's on."

"Not hungry."

He's left alone after that.

...until Fili comes climbing up to see him.

Kili grimaces. "I said -"

Fili catches his runestone mid-flight and smiles. "You were saying?"

"...'m not hungry."

"Good. Neither'm I."

They sit together watching the lake. Kili's leg still throbs and he shifts, bites his cheek.

"...Why'd she have to leave?"

Fili shrugs. "Because elves...?"

"She didn't even say goodbye."

Fili's arm falls around his shoulders. "Maybe it hurt too much, Kee."

The runestone lands back in his hands. Fili won't, can't say it, but he understands.


	98. Grudge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some can never be forgiven.

They stand upon the once-great doorstep, the blood not yet congealed on their armor. The lordling bows his head; the king looks on stone-faced at the wreckage.

The stone slabs of the gateway are charred, cast aside. In their place gapes a black tunnel, deep and fetid like the throat of a fell beast they have yet to slay.

The steps are splashed in blackened orc-guts. The king ascends them and stands, staring into the gloom.

The young lord sees nothing, but he feels it. The earth shudders an ill omen, and as he braces himself upon his red axe a blast of stagnant air spews from the tunnel, as foul and hot as the breath of Hell. Though he had slain innumerable foes, he now weakens in the knees.

"This way is closed to us," warns Dain Nain's heir, not yet thirty.

"No." Thrain is immoveable. "We press on."

"Durin's Bane still lives. My liege, to dare it is madness-"

The King moves suddenly. Thrain's hand snaps across his face and Dain staggers.

"Do not  _dare_  call me mad again, boy."

Dain says nothing, touching his stinging cheek.

He has seen the beast now; and he will not forget.


	99. Mist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She'll wait.

In the morning, grey fog enshrouds the Long Lake. Dawn withdraws its covers slowly: inches of water appear, still and clear as glass.

They lean against the balustrade, above the lower docks. Looking out, Fili can see neither the distant shore, nor the lonely peak awaiting him there. In the wintry air, their breath is mist.

Nia shivers, despite her seal-fur cloak. Frost glimmers in her pale curls. Fili warms her hands in his own and pretends not to hear the shouts of the workers loading his boat.

Nia knows the direction of his thoughts.

"...see Fili...again?"

Two loons pass below, ghosts in the void.

"I don't know."

His road stretches onward. Rada's Company awaits. And a dragon. So long as the mists conceal them, he can imagine he has nowhere else to be.

But, they're lifting now. A ray of sunlight pierces the grey. Fili lifts his head, squints.

"If I...If we don't come back, will you remember me?"

Nia says nothing. She lowers her head, presses something into their joined hands. It's the plume of a sea-bird, speckled dark-and-white.

She implores him to take the token, eyes wide and clear like the sky beyond the mists.

"Nia waits."


	100. Unbroken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 300 edition: Dis learns of their fates.

The black trees of Mirkwood press together over the Old Forest Road, enshrouding the caravans. Dis dislikes these stifling woods: she cannot shake the omen of watchful eyes in the dark.

When the road curves along the dead river, an elf appears in their path. He greets the dwarves with head inclined, a silver lantern in hand.

"Welcome to the Greenwood, Dis daughter of Thrain."

Dis scrutinizes the interloper, a hand on her axe. Behind her, the caravans halt. "Are you the Elvenking Thranduil?"

"I am he," says the elf. "My folk foresaw your coming. These woods are yet unsafe: you would be wise not to linger."

"We do not plan to."

Thranduil gazes thoughtfully at her. "You travel to the Lonely Mountain."

Dis does not play his game: she faces him armed with a mask of stone. "We seek our families and our fortunes."

"A fortune, you will find: that of an ill-fortuned dragon. Yet...you may find little joy in your quest, Lady Dis."

Her mask does not falter. "I know there was a great battle."

"Yes. Now they call it the Battle of Five Armies, and its sorrows will endure for many long years among our peoples. It is in that battle Thorin Oakenshield fell, my lady."

For an instant, she feels an axe smote her chest. Pressure seizes her lungs. She sees him, powerful, immovable, slain before the mountain that haunted him so.

_I feared this, brother._

The pain fades.  _A Durin wears a mask of stone._  She must see to her brave people now, whispering among the caravans.

Yet, for a long moment, she is not brave enough to ask.

She meets the Elvenking's eye.

"My sons?"

"I hear it said," Thranduil notes softly, inclining his head, "the line of Durin is not so easily broken."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End Notes: And there you have it - one hundred Durin-centric moments, reflections, and feels. Thanks for sticking around, and if you enjoyed these stories, I'd really appreciate your feedback!
> 
> (And I also hope that the majority of these were coherent! As stated waaaaay back at the beginning, my goal - and the main challenge! - was to cut my pieces down to 200 words exactly. As I discovered, brevity is hard! I can think of a couple of these that could do well with fleshing out, which I am hoping to get to in the near future...)


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